


Shinigan

by alethiophile



Category: Naruto, Tsukihime
Genre: F/M, Gen, minor crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 09:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 171,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alethiophile/pseuds/alethiophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naruto has an unpleasant encounter, and gains an equally unpleasant power. But how much of his power is gifted, and how much is his own?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Lines

**Author's Note:**

> This is Shinigan, which is an attempt at Third Fang's Blue Eyes of Death Perception challenge. Per the challenge, it gives Naruto a version of the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception from the Nasuverse (Tsukihime/Kara no Kyoukai). To avoid flames from the Nasuverse fanbase, I should probably say that it is _a power closely derived from_ the MEoDP, because the Nasuverse has its own entire metaphysics that I am not well enough versed in to follow correctly; the power will be altered to fit this story and the Naruto universe. In fact, the inspiration of Naruto's eyes is the only real Nasuverse element in the story, which is why I'm calling this a pure Naruto fic rather than a crossover.
> 
> Disclaimer: I, like every other fanfiction writer in the world, do not own Naruto. Actually, maybe Kishimoto writes fanfiction. Then there would be precisely one fanfiction writer in the world who owned Naruto. Maybe I should say 'I, like every other Naruto fanfiction writer in the world, do not own Naruto'.
> 
> Reposted this from FF.net. Going over it again has reminded me how fundamentally terrible the early chapters are. May be pending rewrite.

The day was October the tenth, and the time was evening. Uzumaki Naruto ran through the streets of Konohagakure, which were unusually empty; the feast and festival celebrating the Yondaime Hokage's defeat of the Nine-Tailed Fox had just ended, and only a few people were yet filtering out of the great square. Naruto had not attended the feast, because none of the merchants with their booths would give him any food. He had eaten earlier, and now just ran, getting to know the village better and better. The lack of glares and quiet curses was also an advantage; the sort of people who left the feast early were usually in a hurry, and few of them would take time out of their busy schedules just to make life unpleasant for the village pariah. Today had been a good day, reflected Naruto; it was his birthday, and as always the old man had shown up at his apartment to tell him happy birthday and to give him a present. This year, in honor of his entering the Ninja Academy, he had given him a very nice kunai with his name engraved on the handle, below the wrappings, which Naruto had immediately taken to the academy throwing range to practice with. It felt better in the hand than the Academy kunai, even the ones he got when Iruka-sensei handed them out, and while he was still unable to reliably hit anything with it, he hoped to become better quickly. It was definitely a requirement that a Hokage be able to hit things with kunai.

Akiyama Yuma and Tsukuda Hachiro were both battle-blooded chuunin of Konoha. Unfortunately, they had both also had rather too much to drink during the Fourth's festival, and Yuma had lost a brother and Hachiro his father to the Kyuubi. So when the demon brat ran full-tilt into Yuma and fell on his butt, neither were inclined to forgive him.

"Heeey, Yuma-san, look who it is," said Hachiro in a menacing, but slightly slurred voice.

"It's _that kid_ ," replied Yuma, his emphasis unpromising.

_That kid_ had just gotten up and was in the process of dusting himself off, when looking up he saw the two shinobi looking at him menacingly. "Oh! Sorry, ninja-san!" he said, looking quickly between the two.

"Sorry, he says," said Yuma. "I wonder if he's really sorry, Hachiro-san?"

"D-" Hachiro seemed to cut himself off. "Brat. I bet he's not."

"Let's see." Yuma leaned close to Naruto. "Are you?"

Naruto jumped backwards, waving his hands in front of him. "I am! I am! Sorry!" He attempted to dodge around Yuma and continue on his way, but the chuunin's extended arm halted him. "I have to go, ninja-san!" he said, a minor note of fear entering his voice.

Yuma pushed a bit of killing intent at the boy, expecting an immediate reaction; seeing none, he increased the level until he was almost sweating, and was finally rewarded with a flinch. "You're going nowhere, _brat_ ," he said, in a low voice. "You see, I think there's a good bit of Konoha who wouldn't be too sad to see you dead. And you just ran into me. I think I'm going to call that assault."

Hachiro, who had moved around behind Naruto, spoke from directly behind his ear. "You kill him now, it'll be self-defense, won't it, Yuma-san?"

"I reckon it will, Hachiro-san." Yuma picked Naruto up by the front of his orange jumpsuit. He flailed his limbs about, but to no effect. No one seemed to object to this treatment; if anyone nearby would have stirred themselves to save the demon brat, none of them were ninja powerful enough to take on the two chuunin. He moved into a small alley between the buildings, Hachiro following him.

The beating was quick and brutal. Yuma punched Naruto in the face, hard, while still holding him, then slammed him into the alley wall and hit him again. Naruto was still struggling, but without any real purpose; the Academy training had gone out of his head with the first blow, and even if it hadn't nothing in the Academy taijutsu prepared him for being lifted off the ground one-handed. A flailing kick, without any intent behind it, went towards Yuma's groin; he easily blocked it on one leg, and grinned nastily. "There's another count of assault there. What do you think?"

Hachiro was standing between Naruto and Yuma and the alley entrance, facing them. "So it seems, Yuma-san," he said.

Yuma shifted his grip, gaining a better purchase on the jumpsuit, and hit Naruto knife-handed in the collarbone. It snapped with an audible report, and Naruto screamed. Then Yuma dropped him. His legs folded, and he fell to the ground, shifting the ends of bone against each other and dragging out another scream.

Naruto's shoulder was on fire, and hot pokers were being inserted into it with every breath. His lip had split and his nose was bleeding from the first strikes, and he curled protectively around his shoulder almost on instinct. An indistinct cry of "Die, demon!" came from above as a foot smashed into his arm, both bones breaking, and another wave of pain crashed through his mind. His right leg was next, then his left foot. Then his ribs exploded, pain dwarfing anything he had felt before, and he fell into merciful unconsciousness.

Being unconscious, he did not see the figure, still in formal robes and hat from the Yondaime's festival, appear suddenly at the alley mouth; he did not see the two ninjas who had been beating him turn pale in fright and attempt to run away; he did not see them both caught before they had taken two steps apiece, and knocked out with frightening efficiency.

The Sandaime Hokage, once called the God of Shinobi, could barely rein in his rage enough to only knock the two chuunin out, rather than kill them immediately. He stared at their unconscious bodies for a moment, his hands shaking, then turned to their victim. Naruto had been knocked out a few blows ago, and each blow had broken bones. He bent over him, made as if to lift him up, but stopped after seeing the way his arm twisted, sickeningly, at the motion. Instead, his face weary, he formed a sign and two copies of him appeared by his sides. Without any words, they dashed away over the rooftops, one to bring a medical team with a stretcher, one to bring the ANBU and Ibiki. The original stood still in the alley, watching Naruto and the two chuunin. A glint of metal caught his eye, and he bent over and picked up the kunai he had given Naruto earlier that day. Putting it away, he stood again. At least Naruto would not lose that gift as soon as it was given.

* * *

Naruto woke up in a bed in the hospital. He had been here several times before; he seemed to have more accidents than most children, but he had never been this badly injured before. There was no pain in — well, anywhere, when from what he remembered of what the ninja had done to him he should have been hurting all over. In fact, he should have been dead, if they continued. He couldn't imagine why they had stopped.

There was no pain, but the lack of pain was more pronounced in some areas than others. His left foot was particularly not-painful, and the feeling, while not painful, was unpleasant. Keeping his left leg carefully still, he tried to sit up, but there was a burst of not-pain in his ribs, and he hastily lay down again.

He looked around the room. His field of view was limited by the fact that he could not sit up, but he could see the upper half of a wooden door on the wall to his right, and the back of a chair in the small area of room not occupied by the bed. The walls were white, the door was unpainted. Everything was completely unremarkable except for that line on the door. It was irregular and thin, not quite as thick as the gaps between the planks of the door, but more noticeable because it broke their pattern. It traced from a point midway between the top corners of the door in a wobbly curve downwards before leaving his field of view, and another branched off it about halfway up and traced its own line to near the upper hinge.

Naruto turned his head to get the door more fully in sight, trying to discern why the door had that particular pattern on it — was it a flaw, had paint spilled on it at some point? Then he noticed that the wall around the door bore some similar lines, though they did not continue the ones on the door. Then it seemed that they continued all over the walls and ceiling, no square meter of drywall without its wending, mysterious line. Naruto could have sworn that the walls had been blank when he first looked at them, but the lines had certainly not just appeared — the feeling was more like a realization that they had been there all along.

He sat up. There was another burst of not-pain in his ribs, but he ignored it; the feeling, while unpleasant, was not actually pain, and he was too consumed in the mystery of the there-but-not-there lines to care about it. They were all over the walls, branching and rejoining seemingly at random, wending in irregular paths over the drywall. The obvious thing to do would be to examine them closely, but he could not get out of the bed, instead deciding to simply stare at them. They were entirely still and inoffensive, now that they had appeared, but they still gave him an odd feeling. After only a few seconds of closer attention, the odd feeling escalated to creepiness, and he looked away, instead at the wooden chair sitting in front of the door.

The chair was not unusual. It was all wood, with no cushion or arms, only four legs, a planklike seat, and the framed back. It also now had a bunch of lines on it, at least one crossing each rod of the back and an irregular grid of several on the seat. _What_ are _these?_

He looked next at the floor. It persisted in reassuring sameness for a moment before also manifesting lines, and again the feeling was not that the lines had appeared but that he had noticed that they were there already. With a sinking feeling, he examined the window. There were lines crossing the bar in the middle, and fainter lines on the glass itself. He looked at the table to his side, and felt a momentary, distracting flash of joy as he recognized the kunai the old man had given him sitting on it. Of course, it also had lines on it, as well as the table itself and the lamp above. He looked at the sheets, and there were thin lines running up his covered legs. He looked at his arms, and they were criss-crossed by the same lines — which had _certainly_ not been there when last he looked. He would have guessed that the chuunin had chosen to follow up the beating with a game of scar-the-pariah, had they not obviously been the same thing as on the walls, the ceiling and the door.

The not-pain in his ribs had been becoming steadily more insistently not-painful throughout, but he had ignored it due to first his curiosity and second the creepiness of the situation. Now, the vaguely unpleasant not-pain vanished entirely, replaced by a shipment of emphatic and severe pain. Naruto did not quite scream, but he collapsed, which caused the pain to spike momentarily, then fade. The shock took his mind off the lines, but they remained visible, taunting him with their inexplicable presence on everything he saw.

Steps moved down the hallway towards his door, and it opened. A doctor came in, dressed like a hospital worker in gloves and a white apron, but wearing the hitai-ite of a medic- nin. Doctor, apron and hitai-ite were, by now predictably enough, covered in thin, spidery lines.

"Awake, I see," said the doctor. The line crossing his lips moved normally with his words, as if it was simply painted on. The doctor walked the few steps to Naruto's bedside and moved a hand down his body, glowing with green chakra. "And...trying to sit up already. You would think we made the anesthetic seal unpleasant enough to keep you from doing that. You've got a couple of broken ribs, kid. Don't be putting strain on them." Naruto heard the words, but did not nod or speak; the lapse of whatever had held back the pain in his ribs had also given him wonderful new feelings of pain in his foot and other leg, and any movement would aggravate those or his ribs.

The medic-nin did not seem to be offended by Naruto's lack of response. He waved a hand over Naruto's ribs, glowing again with chakra, and the pain mostly disappeared. "So don't do that again. You'll do more damage. Also, you've got a visitor. I'd say 'wait here' but what else are you going to do?" Chuckling softly at his own joke, the doctor left the room again.

Naruto remained still this time, not moving even his head. Now that he was feeling the pain of his injuries, even without the ribs, he wished rather fervently that he hadn't sat up and triggered its return. He could still see the mysterious lines on the ceiling and on the lamp to the side, and even though he knew it was silly, he could have sworn they were mocking him.

He resolved to ignore the lines for the moment, waiting instead for his visitor, whoever that would be. The only person who would be likely to visit him was the old man, so that was most likely. He was distracted from this train of thought when suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the wall on his left simply fall apart, crumbling in large chunks to the ground. He snapped his head over to look at the wall, and the holes in it and large chunks of plaster on the ground vanished, the wall entirely as it was, including the impossible lines.

_What was that?_ He stared at the wall for several more moments, but nothing happened. He was just about to turn his head back when, again at the corner of his eye, he saw the ceiling, this time, break into pieces and fall — seemingly on him. This time the illusion was broken when the falling pieces failed to actually hit him, and as he turned his head again the ceiling was restored, whole as anything. Naruto gaped up at it in surprise. There had been something about that one...what was it?

There! This time, it was the lamp above him to the right, and as it seemed to fall in pieces Naruto could just discern that the pieces were as if someone had cut the lamp all along the lines for which he still had no explanation.

_Is this some sort of messed-up genjutsu or something?_

His train of thought was interrupted by the door opening. Naruto turned his head to see his visitor, the lamp snapping back into position as he did so. It was the old man. Naruto gave him a wide grin. "Hey, ojiisan!"

The Hokage smiled back. Naruto did not seem to have been affected too badly mentally by the beating. Physically...he was a mess, and it twisted something inside to see him so incapacitated, but those wounds would heal. "Hello, Naruto. How are you feeling?"

Naruto's face twisted in mock complaint. "It hurts! I sat up and it started hurting again! Usually things don't hurt this much!"

The Hokage sat down in the chair. "You haven't ever been hurt this badly before. I think you've only ever had pretty simple breaks before. They crushed your foot completely, and broke three ribs when that man kicked you." His voice was hard, but he left out that similar wounds in another person might very well have ended their ninja career before it began. Naruto's mysterious healing factor, which could not be _proven_ to be related to the demon fox inside him and so which he had not mentioned to any of the many parties who would have demanded information on any sign of the Kyuubi, had done its work; the nasty wounds would take only a few days to fully heal. "Why did you sit up?" This was delivered in a voice less hard, and more long-sufferingly exasperated. "The anesthetic seal should have warned you not to."

"I felt that, but I had to figure out those lines!" said Naruto. Not sitting up again, he pointed with his uninjured arm at the door. "Ojiisan, do you know what those are?"

"What are you pointing at?" asked the Sandaime. He turned in his chair to look at the door. "Lines? You mean the joins between the planks?"

"No, there are lines! Like, just random lines on everything!" said Naruto. "They're all over the door, and the walls, and on that lamp, and even on my arms. And," he paused, looking at the old man, "on you, too. And I've never seen them before! Do you know what they are?"

"I don't see any lines anywhere," said the Hokage. _A genjutsu? But why would there be..._ "Can you describe where they are?"

"They're all over! But there's one," he squinted at the door, "that starts right in the middle of the top of the door and goes down. It's in the middle of the plank. There!" He pointed as carefully as he could.

The Hokage stood up and examined the door closely. There was no line that he could see. He even used a diagnostic medical jutsu, moving his hand over the door where Naruto had indicated. Nothing was on or inside the wood, except its ordinary grain. "Lines...." He turned around and walked to Naruto's side. "I think that someone might have put a genjutsu on you to see those lines, though I can't imagine why anyone would." It seemed like it wasn't _hurting_ him, after all, and anyone who wished Naruto harm would have done something worse than what seemed like an absurdist prank. "I'm going to try to break it now. Tell me if you see anything." He raised one hand to his face in the half-Tiger seal and pushed a carefully measured amount of chakra, enough to break any illusions on anyone in the room, at least. "Kai!"

Naruto looked around the room. "I still see them. What do you think they are?"

The Hokage sat down again, perturbed. He was confident that the boy wasn't lying; it was unlike Naruto to lie, and the only motive he could have had was, again, some kind of prank. Which, of course, _was_ like Naruto, but his pranks usually involved fewer claims to see networks of lines on everything and more ludicrously oversized graffiti and strategically placed paint traps. And if the boy was, in fact, seeing something no one else could, and it wasn't a genjutsu — and it was an accomplished genjutsu master indeed who could create one that would resist even his first attempt at dispelling it — then it was, by simple common sense, likely to be related to the fox. But jinchuuriki were not unheard of, and while it would hardly be in the interest of any village to release detailed information on their jinchuurikis' abilities, Ibiki and Jiraiya's most excellent intelligence networks would have picked up any hint of a rumor of a dojutsu component to the powers of any jinchuuriki. Was the fox — or Minato's seal — different somehow?

His train of thought was interrupted by Naruto waving his good arm at him. "Hey, ojiisan, what do you think they are? You went all quiet!"

The Sandaime smiled at Naruto. "I was just thinking. I don't know what they are, but if you see anything else that seems related to the lines, let me know."

Naruto replied immediately, with his usual enthusiasm. "Well, I was seeing this stuff right before you came in, where if I looked at the same thing for too long it looks like the stuff in the corner of my eye is falling apart, but then if I look at it it goes back together again, but when it falls apart it looks like it got cut along all the lines. So I thought it might be a genjutsu too, but I guess it's not, right?"

The Hokage frowned. "Things look like they're falling apart...along the lines. That's odd. I've never heard of anything like it. What does it look like?"

Naruto focused on the ceiling above for a moment. Then, suddenly, he flinched to his right and glanced left with a perturbed expression on his face. "It looks like just all of a sudden someone came in here with a saw and cut the wall along all the lines, except really fast, and the pieces are falling to the ground and I can see the other side of the wall. But then when I look at it it goes back to where it was."

"Interesting.... Can you tell me what you saw on the other side? Did you get a good look?"

"Not really, but it's a room kind of like this one and it looked like there was someone in the bed."

The Hokage sat back and wondered. Presently, Naruto looked back at him. "Ojiisan, how long is it going to take for this to heal? I don't want to be stuck here forever."

"You should notice improvement just today, if you pay attention. You can walk a little tomorrow, and be out of here by the end of the week."

"Thanks, ojiisan!" This was with a bright smile. "Oh, and thanks for that kunai, too! That's really cool! I'm going to get so I can hit the target with it every time!"

The Hokage smiled. Naruto's brand of enthusiasm was infectious, and a welcome counterpoint to the icy or furious political squabbles that were so many of the rest of his interactions. "That's good, Naruto. But don't take it to the Academy, okay?"

Naruto frowned. "Why not? It feels so much better than the Academy ones!"

The Hokage leaned forwards, as if imparting a secret. "Ah, but Naruto, if you get really, really good with the Academy kunai, how good do you think you'll be with this better one?" Naruto brightened considerably at that.

The Sandaime stood, stretching a little. "I have to go now, Naruto. Good luck, and don't try to move from the bed unless the doctor tells you."

Naruto waved enthusiastically with his uninjured arm. "Bye, ojiisan!"

Naruto lapsed back into the bed as the door closed. Though he would be stuck here for the rest of the day, it seemed to already be afternoon by the light coming in the window.

The foot of the bed, just visible at the bottom of his field of view, seemed suddenly to crack in pieces and fall. Naruto blinked and scowled, the bedframe reappearing as he did so. "Annoying," he said aloud. He closed his eyes — luckily, the inside of his eyelids seemed to be immune to whatever had put mysterious lines on the rest of the world.

It was perhaps an hour later, which Naruto spent alternately with his eyes closed or watching random pieces of his surroundings fall spontaneously to pieces, when he began to notice a gnawing hunger in his midsection. He looked around, and seeing no method of calling a doctor less conspicuously, started shouting. "Hey! Someone! Do I get any food in this place?"

It was about a minute of this before he heard steps down the hallway again, and the door opened. It was the same medic-nin as before, but his expression was annoyed. "Hey. Quiet it down a little, kid, there are other patients here. You missed lunch because you were still asleep. I'll send someone in with food."

Naruto replied at a more reasonable volume. "Thanks, doctor-san. Is there anything to do around here?"

"Not other than lie around. If you get another visit, you can ask whoever it is to bring you something to read."

Naruto pouted. "All right," he muttered. The medic-nin raised an eyebrow at him, then, after a moment, turned for the door.

"If there isn't anything else...?" he asked, managing to make it clear that there had better not, in fact, be anything else. Naruto gulped.

"No, that's all," he said. "Uh, thank you," he went on hurriedly, remembering his manners. He got a nod over the shoulder, and the doctor left.

As the door closed, Naruto flinched and looked up, only to see the ceiling return quickly to its non-broken state. He shivered. _That could get... really annoying, after a while._ He lay back on the pillow again, and before he could remember to close his eyes the table to his right broke in pieces and collapsed. He shook his head compulsively and closed his eyes.

A nurse came in with food. He opened his eyes, sitting up and trying to keep from looking at any one thing for long enough that he would see the illusions of destruction. She carried a tray with legs, which she extended and placed across his lap, harder than she needed to. A twinge shot through his ribs, and the nurse gave him a nasty look before stepping back. Naruto looked away, reminded of his apparent status in the village. As he looked out the window to avoid her eye, suddenly, deep gashes appeared across her arms, her chest, her face. She fell, blood pouring from the wounds, her arm already separate from her body....

He gave a yell of horror and jerked his head around to look at her. She, of course, was still entirely intact, and glanced at him contemptuously before stepping out of the room.

Naruto panted, trying to slow his heart. He knew that it had been an illusion, just another manifestation of the same thing that had been bugging him since he woke, but that had been much worse than what had happened before. The lines still weaved tauntingly and inexplicably across everything in his field of view, but he now looked at them with deep distrust. He had seen the line running diagonally down the nurse's arm, but thought little of it, ignoring it as he had begun to ignore the others...and then he had looked in the wrong place, and that line had seemed to rip her arm _off_. He looked at the lines on his own arms and shuddered.

The tray with the food had not been disturbed by his sudden movement, so he tried to sit up to eat it and was reprimanded by a slash of pain across his ribs. He dropped back, wincing, but the pain was less even now than it had been, and he tried again, pushing through it. He was _damned_ if he was going to call back that nurse and ask her nicely to sit him up with pillows. She'd probably be more inclined to smother him with one.

These dark thoughts accompanied him until he got himself sat up, at which point they were displaced by disgust at the quality of the food. There was a thin, stringy and tough cut of some sort of unidentifiable meat, a glass of watery milk that was pale blue around the edges, and a mound of something that might, at some point, have been a salad green, but had been tortured to the point of losing its form entirely. He looked away in disgust, and the plate split in two, dropping its unidentifiable meat and green onto the tray. Looking quickly back, he muttered under his breath and began to reluctantly eat.

He was reluctant to shout again, but it was nearly another hour after he had finished and no one had come to remove the tray. He had lain down again after finishing, and spent the rest of the time, mostly, with his eyes closed, trying to avoid the constant sensation that his surroundings were constructed from carefully arranged toothpicks and twine, and the slightest movement might break them. After sufficient impatience, he again started shouting. "Hey! Hey! Someone come and get this thing off me!"

The medic-nin came in rather more quickly this time, and glared at Naruto. "What did I say about the shouting?"

"Well, no one was coming to take this! And I can't quite sleep with it here!" He pointed at the tray.

"What? The nurse was supposed to... well, of course she didn't. Of course. Blasted unprofessional...." The medic began swearing under his breath and removed the tray. "Listen, kid, don't shout anymore. I'll be right back with something." He left the room, Naruto already having closed his eyes — he didn't want to see anyone else gutted by illusory lines.

The medic returned several minutes later carrying a two-way radio set. Naruto opened his eyes as the door opened, but carefully looked straight at the medic- nin, hoping that that would keep him from being a subject of Naruto's personal Illusion Of Death. The medic left it on the table next to the Hokage's kunai; Naruto could reach it by reaching over with his good arm. "Don't bother talking, just press this button." He indicated a button on the side of the device. "That'll call me, more quietly. Not the nurses, who apparently _cannot do their job_. No more shouting, okay?"

"Okay." Naruto made as if to bow, forgetting his position; he flinched at the unwise motion, and hurried on. "Thank you, medic-san." The medic made for the door, Naruto keeping his eye on him. As he walked out, the chair just to his left split into pieces and fell. Naruto jumped; that hadn't been the medic, true, but it certainly hadn't been in the corner of his eye, either. He closed his eyes again, hurriedly.

It was not even yet dark, but Naruto, who had nothing better to do than lie still with his eyes closed anyway, decided to try to sleep. It was hard. Even with his eyes closed, he would occasionally flash back to the nurse, cut up, sliced in pieces, rendered dead and mangled by the malevolent lines. Even the knowledge that it was not real, that it had never happened, that he was being frightened by the memories of an illusion, did not make the images stop repeating. He finally slept, but his nightmares were of a grid of lines covering everything and everyone, and it all falling to pieces, everyone he knew reduced to inert piles of bloody meat, Konoha itself broken in pieces and lying on the ground.

He did not scream when he woke, but it was a near thing. The room was dark, so dark that at first he could not even see the window. After his eyes adjusted, he could see it in a faint glow, probably a light down on the street. He was covered in sweat, though he had not moved from his position. An incautious decision to try resulted in a pointed twinge from his ribs and his foot; his broken arm did not pain him. He fell back into the pillow and closed his eyes again, grateful for the darkness that hid the lines of death.

* * *

Naruto woke the next morning to bright sunshine. The sun shone in the window and left the room brightly lit, and the environment was cheerful enough, but he still saw the lines on the walls, the ceiling, everything, and they reminded him inescapably of his nightmare. He shuddered violently at the memory, then flinched almost instinctively, expecting pain; but even that relatively drastic motion did not draw any particular feeling from his ribs. He felt his side, where the pain had been, and felt nothing; encouraged, he pushed a little harder, and it twinged, dashing his hopes that he might have been fully cured.

He lay back again, looking up, and saw the chain holding up the lamp above him break in five pieces, the lamp plummeting to the ground to break the illusion. He shook his head violently and tried to sit up. The motion succeeded with no unusual pain, but a lingering sense of fragility about his side and foot warned him not to attempt any gymnastics, even if he could stand. He contented himself, for the moment, with stacking his pillows behind him and leaning back against the head of the bed. Then the door broke in pieces and fell to the ground. He shook his head violently and closed his eyes. The door had been right in the center of his field of view; apparently whatever it was that was affecting him was progressing. The idea was not reassuring.

He sat with his eyes closed, thinking of nothing in particular, until he became aware of a renewed hunger. The thought of more food like the previous day's made him cringe in disgust, but his hunger eventually overcame it. Rather than shouting, he searched out the radio communicator on his bedside table (the lamp broke in pieces and fell, almost on him) and pressed the call button, before noticing that he had unconsciously moved his broken arm. A test wave called forth no pain, and Naruto grinned. This one had healed even faster than the last time he had broken a limb.

The window broke and fell to the ground, its pieces shattering on impact. Naruto closed his eyes again, startled and annoyed. _If nothing else, this will drive me insane in another day._ The lack of a breeze, a noise or any smell of the outdoors reassured him that the window was, in fact, still intact. He remained there until the door opened and the medic-nin from the day before stepped inside.

"Hello, medic-san!" said Naruto, opening his eyes to look at the doctor. "I wondered if you could tell me — what time is it, and when can I get breakfast?"

"You slept late, Naruto-san," said the ninja. The wooden siding tacked onto the wall in the hallway outside the door split in several pieces and fell, exposing bare plaster behind. Naruto shook his head slightly as the medic-nin continued. "It's almost noon. You'll have to wait for lunch."

Naruto nodded, looking slightly chagrined. "Okay, medic-san. Oh, ojiisan said that I could get out of bed today. Can I?"

The medic looked slightly aghast at Naruto's familiarity, and stepped forward to run a hand over Naruto's ribs. "Hokage-sama is probably right," he said after a moment, emphasizing the title. "You can try it now, but if it hurts you'd better get back in bed."

Naruto threw off the covers only to note that he was wearing nothing but briefs. He contained his momentary startlement and slid his legs off the side of the bed, successfully standing, then asked, "Also, medic-san, is there anything for me to wear?"

The medic-nin nodded (the left wall broke again, exposing another near-identical room) and handed Naruto a hospital gown that had been hanging on the wall. Naruto turned away, not out of modesty so much as a sudden dread that the illusion would catch the medic-nin and he would be subjected to another round of blood and death. He slid into the gown, knotting it as tightly as it would knot, then spoke without turning around. "Thank you, medic-san. Do you know where my other clothes are?"

"They're being taken care of. You should be able to change back into them sometime later today, if you want, but you shouldn't spend too much time out of bed. Is there anything else?" This last was spoken with a slight edge to it; Naruto guessed that the medic did not appreciate the gesture of speaking with his back turned. He turned around, reluctantly, and shook his head. The medic nodded and went out (this time it was the doorframe, tens of little wooden chunks falling to the ground around a ragged hole in the wall). Naruto quickly shut his eyes and sat on the bed.

Feeling more restless now that he could stand, Naruto opened his eyes and looked around. The room was small, and only felt more confining now that he was capable of moving in it. He stood up and moved to the window, looking out. The view was impressive, and the more pleasant for the fact that he could not see any lines on anything. He was unsure whether that was due to distance or if the odd illusions did not extend to things far from him, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Then the question was answered for him as a tree shivered and fell to the ground, not as if it had been cut but collapsing straight downwards, a cloud forming of its leaves in the air. He shook his head compulsively, looking down, but soon looked out again. Keeping his eyes closed was getting painfully boring, and he was tired of looking at the lines.

Two more trees and a small building later, Naruto decided to stop looking out the window. He moved over to the chair and sat in it, keeping his eyes down. His eyes fell on a large, irregular piece of flooring, unobscured by the bed, defined by the eerie, spidery lines that formed its borders. Almost as soon as he saw it, it was cut along the edges and fell into the room below. Shaking his head again, he closed his eyes and moaned in frustration.

The door opened. Naruto looked up and saw the medic-nin stepping through, holding a tray. This time, the tray split in two, a plate and glass falling to the ground and shattering. He shook his head convulsively, trying to clear out his mind, as the medic walked over to him with the entirely intact meal tray. He set it on the ground in front of Naruto, deploying its legs so that it made a passable table. "Here you are, Naruto-san. Also, Hokage-sama," he made a point of the honorific, "is here to see you again. I'll bring him up in three minutes. Be polite." With this admonition he again disappeared out the door. Naruto, who had looked down as soon as he saw the medic, looked up again, and ate. The food was no better than it had been the night before, but he was hungry enough not to care.

The door opened just as Naruto finished eating. He looked up. The doctor was holding the doorknob, and he could see the old man standing behind him. This was as far as he got before he saw the doctor slump suddenly, blood starting unexpectedly from his clothes, then collapse, his body coming apart as he fell.

Without noticing the motion, Naruto was on his feet. The tray clattered to the floor as he yelled in horror, his eyes fixed on the bloody corpse lying in pieces on the threshold. Then it vanished.

The doctor rushed up to him. "Naruto-san! What's wrong?" Naruto was hyperventilating, his mind still occupied by the image of that same doctor in pieces on the floor. "What's wrong?" The Hokage came up behind, pushing the doctor aside with one arm. He knelt in front of Naruto, his hands on the boy's shoulders.

"Naruto! Breathe! Calm!" He reinforced the words with a slight genjutsu, one that would force his words to break the cycle of panic in Naruto's mind. The boy had closed his eyes immediately after screaming, and they remained closed as he calmed down. He took nearly a minute to slow his breathing to normal before he responded.

"Ojiisan, I told you about the lines, and things breaking along the lines, and it's getting worse, and I just saw the doctor get cut up and there was blood and he fell down...." Naruto's words became more and more frantic as he spoke, until the Hokage again applied the genjutsu. The next words were calmer. "I keep seeing everything break, like the chair and that lamp and the wall and the floor...and even a bunch of trees outside...and then there was the doctor, and the same thing happened with a nurse yesterday...."

The Hokage waited until his words ceased and his breathing was even before replying. "It's all right, Naruto. No one is dead. I know it's hard, seeing something like that, but no one is dead. You don't need to worry about it." He was beginning to reconsider this being a genjutsu someone had laid on the boy to hurt him; it had seemed harmless enough the day before, but this was entirely different.

Naruto opened his eyes, having apparently stopped panicking, but his fists were clenched and his voice was tight. "Ojiisan...this is getting bad. It's not so hard when there aren't people around, but I just can't look at people, I guess, because they might, like...." He trailed off.

"Naruto, it's all right. I'm going to try to find out whether it might be a genjutsu that's more subtle than I've usually seen. Can you stay here quietly until I get back?"

Naruto nodded, his fists still clenched. Then he sat down again, looking up, and suddenly screamed again and closed his eyes.

The Hokage sighed, hating to see the boy in pain, and spoke to the medic-nin. "Listen, I think this might be a genjutsu that someone's put on him. I'm going to go look into that. Try to make him comfortable, but don't stay in here unless you need to — it makes it worse for him." The medic nodded, his expression puzzled but resolute, and the Hokage walked out the door, seeking the one person in the village who was probably more skilled with genjutsu than himself.

* * *

Naruto sat on the chair, his eyes closed, his head down, his hands shaking in his lap. The images of the dismembered bodies of the nurse from the day before, the medic-nin who had brought him his meals, the Hokage himself, kept running through his head. He heard the medic grab the tray from in front of him and leave the room, but the awareness was second to his near-panic. He didn't know what was happening, and he couldn't leave like this — it would be torture just to walk down the street. He slumped down in the chair, keeping his eyes closed. _What's happening? Why is this happening?_

The door opened. He looked up, opening his eyes, and suppressed the urge to slam them shut again. The Hokage entered, with someone behind him. (The doorknob split from the door and fell in pieces.) He forced his attention back to the newcomer. It was a woman with long black hair, wearing a Konoha hitai-ite, and as he looked again he noticed that her eyes were distinctly red.

"Kurenai-san, here he is," said the Hokage. He stood to one side, and his face was tired and sad, more so than Naruto had ever seen. (This time it was his hat, showering the Hokage with strips of cloth; Naruto almost laughed.) "I tried a simple dispelling, but it did not react. I cannot think of anything that it could be other than a genjutsu, unless...." Here he gave her a very significant look. She nodded and stepped forwards. Then it happened, just as it had before; the woman suddenly tensed, then slumped, then blood began to show along the lines that had adorned her body. She collapsed in a pile of blood, her limbs separating from her body, her hands and feet mangled, and then the illusion broke. He bit back a scream this time, with great difficulty, but could not hide his tensing up or the sudden look of horror that crossed his face. The woman, Kurenai, stopped, bit her lip, then stepped forward, knelt, and put one hand on his head.

"Try to remain calm, Naruto-san," she said. He slowed his breathing, feeling an odd sensation that he could only describe as pins and needles of the mind. The feeling persisted for some seconds, until Kurenai removed her hand. She frowned, then stood up. "Can you point out where you see one of these lines?"

Naruto pointed to the nearest line, which was on the floor. Kurenai ran a hand over the area, checking it carefully, then raised one hand in a seal and muttered, "Kai!" Nothing seemed to change. (The line that he had just been focusing on to point out its location split, pieces of the floor falling into the room below.) Turning back to Naruto, she put her hand back on his forehead and said again, "Kai!" Again, there was no change.

Kurenai turned to the Hokage, standing. "I'm sorry, Hokage-sama. I can't find any genjutsu here. I don't know what to say...." She looked at Naruto. (Her hitai-ite split in five pieces, two of them falling, the others still held to her headband by the rivets.) "He's obviously seeing something, something that hurts him, but I can't find any external influence. Might it be...?"

The Hokage nodded. "It most likely is. I don't know what to do here...we need Jiraiya, he might be able to tell us if the seal was broken somehow."

This time it was Kurenai again. She collapsed in blood, dying. Then, the illusion broke. Then, the Hokage. The blood was mostly concealed by his long robe of office, but it was painfully obvious that his body was split in pieces. Then the illusion broke.

Naruto shot to his feet, involuntarily, clenching his eyes shut. "NO!" The shout was wild and angry. Opening his eyes again, he looked around, a little wildly, seeing lines, lines, lines. They covered the floor, the walls, the bed, even Kurenai and the Hokage. Looking at the latter two, he flinched away, remembering the sight of their mangled bodies.

His eyes fell on the table at the side of the bed, and he darted over to it, snatching up the kunai the Hokage had given him. "Damned! LINES!" Lifting it over his head, he slammed the point of the knife downwards into the line crossing the tabletop, expecting to embed it in the wood. Instead, it skipped and skittered along the surface, tracing the line almost unintentionally — and the table fell in two pieces.

Naruto waited for the illusion to break, for the table to reform as it already had so many times. It did not. He shook his head wildly, clenching his eyes shut and then opening them. The table was still broken. It had split in half directly along the line he had cut. The pieces still had lines on them. None of the fragments of anything he had seen break still had any lines. Almost curiously, he ran the tip of the knife over another line, this one on the table leg. The leg broke in two. The radio the doctor had given him lay forgotten in the fragments as he did it again, with another leg. It broke in two. The illusion did not break. It was real.

He knelt in the wreckage, almost laughing. It was too much. The nightmares were coming true. "What are they? WHAT ARE THEY?!"

Almost beneath his notice was the Hokage's hand seal, or his spoken word. "Kokuangyo no Jutsu!" What was not beneath his notice was the sudden darkness that engulfed the room — sudden and absolute darkness, with no furniture, no walls, no people, no LINES to torment him. He dropped to his knees in release.

He felt hands on his shoulders, felt a hand gently remove the kunai from his loosened grip. Felt himself lifted up and laid on something soft. He did not care. He shouted, no longer knowing if he spoke in truth or only in his mind. "WHAT ARE THE LINES?!"

A presence filled his mind, oppressive with its power. He saw red all over, even as he still perceived only the blackness of the Hokage's jutsu. A voice spoke, awful in its malice, but somehow tempered — was that _amusement?_

**They are DEATH, whelp.**

The churning dread that had taken over Naruto's mind was submerged in a new fear, less panicky, less insane. He did not reply intentionally, but whatever filled his mind took his confusion for an answer.

**The LINES are DEATH. You SEE with MY EYES. How do you like it, WHELP?** There was a heavy, gloating amusement in the words.

Naruto quailed. He could still perceive the darkness around him, soothing balm after the horror before, but somehow overlaid on it was a fiery red, and he could feel the presence of an enormous power, heavy with malice. He rallied his strength to respond. _What are you?_

The question brought on a roar of laughter. **You do not _know?_ What was the blond idiot _doing?_ Oh, this should be very, very interesting....**

The laughter faded slowly, and the presence with it. Only darkness filled his vision now, and Naruto's overtaxed mind let go and slept.

* * *

He woke again, and again it was daylight. It had been barely afternoon when he had freaked out the day before, so, he deduced, he must have been sleeping a long time. He was suddenly full of energy and restless, in a way that even his extreme boredom the two days previously had not exceeded; he bounded out of the bed, noticing that he was still wearing the hospital gown. He looked around, and saw a flash of orange on the chair. It was his clothes. He changed into them quickly and looked around. The bed was rumpled with his quick exit, and a cheerful patch of sunlight sat on the floor. It took him a moment to realize why everything looked so... happy. There were no lines.

It took a moment for this development to sink in, and when it did he laughed out loud with delight. No lines. No more of everything he saw falling apart. It had not been real. He could forget about it.

The table beside the bed was sitting on the ground, the top split down the middle, two of its legs sheared in half. The surfaces were eerily smooth — not split down the grain, but simply cut, perfectly, as if by a knife sharper than a hair.

Okay, maybe he couldn't forget about it.

Still in the wreckage of the table was the radio communicator that the doctor had given him two days earlier. Naruto picked it up and pressed the call button. Soon enough, there were steps down the hall and the medic-nin walked in.

He looked startled to see Naruto up and dressed, but maintained a professional attitude. "Hello, Naruto-san. What is it?"

"Hey, medic-san. Do you know the time? And when can I get out of this place?"

"It's nine in the morning — congratulations on getting up early for once. And let's see." The medic-nin approached him. Naruto grinned at being able to maintain eye contact without fear of the man falling apart in front of his eyes.

After a fairly comprehensive chakra-scan, the doctor stood up, shaking his head. "Impressive. Truly impressive. Only three days.... Naruto-san, there's no reason why you can't go now. I believe they are holding some of your affairs at the Hokage's office, so you should check there before you go home."

Naruto smiled brightly. "Thanks, medic-san!"

Fifteen minutes later, Naruto was near the Hokage's office door. He ignored the disapproving look of the receptionist to walk straight up to it and listen for a moment. Not hearing any voices, he simply walked in.

The office was as he had seen it before. The old man was sitting at his desk, doing some form of paperwork. He looked up and smiled to see Naruto. "Hello, Naruto. You're here for this, I suppose?" He held up the kunai that had sat at Naruto's bedside the three days before.

"Yeah, thanks!" Naruto took the knife and stowed it in a pocket, making sure to keep the blade away from his skin. "But I had some questions."

"Yes?" said the Hokage, sighing somewhat, as he thought he could guess what the questions were.

"I woke up this morning and it was all gone. The lines, everything," Naruto said. "But yesterday once you had me in that darkness-jutsu-thing," he wiggled his fingers to illustrate, "I saw something kinda weird."

The Hokage tensed. "What was that?"

"It was like, there was this big red aura, and I could see all red even though I still just saw the darkness from the jutsu, right? And then this voice talked to me, when I was going crazy and yelling 'what are the lines?', and it said something like 'the lines are death and you see with my eyes'. And it was just, you know, weird. So do you know anything about that?"

The Hokage sighed further. He had hoped to postpone this revelation until far later, but the demon fox was already, apparently, inside Naruto's mind; it was only fair to tell him what was happening. "You see, Naruto, this is going to take some explanation."

* * *

Naruto began to fidget again as the Hokage finished explaining. "The demon fox? Really?"

"Yes, Naruto. You have to understand — the Yondaime had no other option. He did not choose to do this on a whim, and he sacrificed his life to do it."

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, I get that... but, is that why everyone seems to hate me? Because the fox is in me? Why?"

The Sandaime sighed again. "You have to understand, Naruto, that most of the people who hate you for this are civilians. They don't quite understand the idea behind the seal; they simply know that you hold the demon, and they think that they are getting revenge on the demon by attacking you. And because my law prevents them from telling anyone or inciting hatred directly, they just... you know what they do."

Naruto nodded grimly. "I do." He sat quietly for a moment. "But this whole thing with the lines... that wasn't expected, was it?"

"No. The fox said that you were seeing with its eyes, but we don't know why that would happen. It could be...." The Hokage was silent for a moment, then continued. "The fox makes you heal faster than normal people, Naruto. You healed from some very terrible injuries in only three days, and part of that was taken up by your adverse reaction to the lines." This drew a sheepish grin from Naruto. "We don't know, but it may be... pushing its chakra out, to heal you there. Perhaps pushing enough to heal you from such a nasty beating activated you seeing like it does somehow. We don't know."

Naruto sighed. "I...." He shook his head. "Ojiisan, I... I don't want to be a bother, but this.... Will it come back? Even now that it's gone, that was...." He shuddered. "I didn't like that at all."

The Hokage gave him a sad smile.

"I don't know, Naruto. I can only speculate. I think that if you avoid such injuries, they should not recur very soon. Your healing is quite remarkable, and to provide such results must take an enormous amount of power. That this power should carry along such an effect... is not surprising, I suppose. It is a demon, after all." He sighed. "Naruto. If you see them again, come to me. Should you begin having such symptoms again, I can place you in darkness. You may find this tedious, but it would be better than the alternative."

Naruto nodded, slowly. "It would. It still bothers me, though, that it happens. I mean, what else don't we know about the," he gestured to his stomach, "seal thing?"

The Sandaime thought about this for a moment.

"Naruto, I would like to make you an offer."

The boy shifted. "What's that, ojiisan?"

"I'm going to give you access to the Konoha archives, like a full ninja would have. Not a genin, either. Usually you need to be chuunin level to get this access. And I'm going to ask in return that you learn as much as you can about fuinjutsu. Okay?"

Naruto frowned at him. "That seems a little boring, ojiisan."

The Hokage's smile became wider, and knowing. "Ah, but little you know. Naruto, which branch of the ninja arts is used to create exploding tags?"

Naruto froze for several seconds. They had seen exploding tags demonstrated, of course, and it was an upcoming lesson to learn to trigger them with their own chakra. However, they were most emphatically not allowed to purchase tags for themselves, and the Academy supplies were kept well hidden away. Then he smiled broadly. "Oh, that sounds fun, ojiisan." And was that a bit of a gleeful smirk hidden under his usual grin?

"I'm sure it does, Naruto. And I think that you might find fuinjutsu to be of use in...shall we say, other ways, that some might consider... a little outside the norm. But." The Hokage had straightened, and his smile was gone. "They may not look it, and you will find some who look down on them. But _seals are the most dangerous ninja art_. Both to your enemies, and to _you_. You have my leave to study up to a certain level on your own. You are not to go beyond that level, and whatever you make is to be used _safely_." He looked down at Naruto, very serious. "The reason I ask you to do this, Naruto, is because of your status. The seal which holds the Fox inside you is the Fourth's masterpiece of fuinjutsu. There are many shinobi in the village who know some of that art, and none of them will stint their help with it, if you need. But you will always have the greatest access to it, and perhaps some insight unavailable from the outside. You will not reach that level for a while, but in the long run, you must learn fuinjutsu to defend yourself against what you hold inside. Do you understand?"

Naruto gulped a bit, but stared back at the Hokage with resolution. "I got it, ojiisan." He took a breath, and his grin began to return. "And... thanks."

* * *

Naruto sighed as he left the Academy. It seemed that he did not get time off the Academy for any longer than he was in the hospital for, and he had stayed up most of the previous night reading the first sealing scroll the old man had given him. He had woken up in a panic and dashed out the door, far too late to make his usual lunch. He was _starving,_ and he didn't have enough money right now to go to Ichiraku-san's place for ramen. He walked tiredly home, looking forwards only slightly to eating the mere instant ramen available there.

Hyuuga Hinata walked along some way behind him. She had been worried when Naruto simply disappeared for three days after the Yondaime's festival, but when he came back he seemed healthy — if tired. He seemed less engaged, though, less attentive even than usual, and he would occasionally, when he thought no one was looking, give a sigh and shake his head as if to dislodge something. However, today he had, for the first time, actually forgotten his lunch, and as was usual she had packed double so that, if he did, she could offer him food. She had missed the opportunity to give it to him at lunch, but....

Mustering all her courage, she moved faster and caught up with Naruto. "Ano ...Naruto-ku..un...." She trailed off, losing her nerve as he turned to her.

"Ah? Hello, Hinata-san," he said, giving her his usual broad grin.

She ducked her head and said nothing.

"Hinata-san?" he asked.

"You...youdidn'teatlunchtoday," she said in a rush. "I..I have some food left over, if you want..." She offered him the portion of her lunch that she had not touched.

Naruto looked at her, his expression puzzled. "Ah...thank you, Hinata-san." He took the second bento. "Why...are you offering this to me?"

Hinata ducked her head even further, and blushed. "Ano...you didn't eat lunch...and you looked hungry. And, uh, you looked a little bit tired today, and...." She trailed off.

Naruto was silent for a moment, then smiled at her, and it seemed different then his usual brash grin — more real, somehow. "Thank you, Hinata-san. I should get your bento back to you. Do you mind just waiting here?"

She shook her head quickly. "No! No...that's fine. Whatever you want, Naruto-kun...."

He smiled again, and sat on the rock to eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated with revisions, 2015-03-30.


	2. Clones

The Sandaime Hokage sat in a chair at the head of two long tables. Along the table to his right were arrayed the shinobi half of Konoha's council. To his left were the civilians. To the right, each face was composed, except Nara Shikaku's, which was asleep. To the left, most of the faces were enraged.

"This is an _outrage_!" sputtered the tall, portly civilian who stood in his place to the left. He had been speaking for the past five minutes, basically repeating the same points over and over: firstly, that he had been foully burgled; secondly, that there had been _traps_ laid for him; thirdly, that he was a citizen of Konoha, after all, and demanded some security; fourthly, that the de— the brat had gone too far this time, and fifthly, that said de— brat should be executed for the crime of, apparently, existing.

The remainder of the civilians were not particularly happy, either. Perhaps half of them bore the signs of having recently and hurriedly cleaned themselves off, including the indignant merchant who was standing, the owner, the Hokage recalled, of a moderately large bakery. As the loudmouthed man finished at long last, several other civilians spoke up, telling similar stories, less the burglary. It seemed that, early this morning, the owners or employees of many village retail institutions (notably, the Hokage noticed with remarkable grumpiness, those convenient to Uzumaki Naruto's route from his apartment to the Academy and back) had entered their places of business to find crude trip-string traps linked, somehow, to storage seals containing large amounts of flour. The bakery owner had found a similar trap, then, after (the Hokage surmised) sputtering in rage for at least half an hour and repeatedly skirting the edges of his Law regarding the jinchuuriki, discovered that half his latest shipment of flour—four barrels in all—was missing. It was now assumed that this was the source of the flour in the traps.

After hearing the civilians out—and shutting several of them up with killing intent when they came too close to the word 'demon'—the Hokage turned to the ninja side of the council. "Have any similar traps been found on clan lands?"

"No traps were laid on Aburame land." Aburame Shibi was unreadable as usual.

"No traps were laid on Akimichi land." Akimichi Chouza did not seem too concerned.

Chouza poked at Shikaku, who was next to him. "Hmm? No traps were laid on Nara land." He went back to sleep.

"No traps were laid on Yamanaka land." Yamanaka Inoichi seemed almost amused.

"No traps were laid on Inuzuka land." There was no 'almost' about Inuzuka Tsume's amusement.

"A single trap was laid at the gate to the Hyuuga compound. It was triggered by Hyuuga Makoto-san, who was able to avoid its payload almost entirely. The perpetrator was apparently unable or disinclined to penetrate the compound." Hyuuga Hiashi tried for the usual Hyuuga impassiveness, but some annoyance leaked through; the Hokage was unable to discern whether this was occasioned by the prank or Hiashi's constitutional objection to the civilian council shouting about things.

"And I have the previous report of its caretakers that a single trap was laid at the Uchiha clan compound. Thank you. Is anyone claiming damages from the traps alone?" There was a clamor from the civilian side of the council, which the Hokage quieted after perhaps thirty seconds. "I will clarify. Are there any claims of damages from the traps alone, that amount to more than an hour's cleaning work? It is not the village's or the council's duty to compensate civilians for such trivial expenses." The Hokage was rather annoyed, and focused a bit of his annoyance on the noisemakers.

The silence that followed was grudging, but silent nonetheless.

"Very well. Since it appears that none of the traps caused _noticeable_ damages, we will close that matter there. Tsukuda Kouta." The annoyed bakery owner who had been venting earlier stood up. "You have sustained damages equal to half of one weekly shipment of flour, correct?"

"That amount, plus the expense of rush ordering another shipment, Hokage-sama."

"Very well. You will submit a bill of expenses to the Hokage's office, and you will be compensated in full. Are you satisfied?"

"No, by Kami I'm not satisfied! What about the de— the brat? He can't get away with this!"

"You are remarkably quick to assume the guilt of Uzumaki Naruto, Kouta-san." Though it was probably a decent assumption even without the Hokage's insider knowledge of what Naruto had been studying in the archives the past two years. "The perpetrator will be found, and punished accordingly. This punishment does not concern you. You are being compensated. Are you satisfied?"

The man grumbled for a moment before replying. "I am satisfied."

"Thank you. Now, that matter is closed. Are there any motions to bring before this special session?"

A man on the civilian side stood up. "I move that, on the authority of the council, Uzumaki Naruto be put to death for the security of Konohagakure."

The Hokage sighed deeply. "The motion is heard. Votes will be taken in favor, opposed, or abstain. Civilian council, vote."

Predictably enough, the vote on the civilian council was overwhelmingly in favor. The Hokage noted a few carefully hidden smirks on the faces of the few who voted opposed. He spoke again once the vote had finished. "The vote is logged. Shinobi council, vote."

"Clan Aburame, opposed."

"Clan Akimichi, opposed."

Shikaku did not even have to be poked awake this time. "Clan Nara, opposed."

"Clan Yamanaka, opposed."

"Clan Inuzuka, opposed."

"Clan Hyuuga, opposed." The Hokage gave Hiashi a sharp look—these motions usually gained his favor—which he returned without acknowledgement.

"Proxy vote for Clan Uchiha is in the hands of the Hokage. Clan Uchiha, opposed. The motion passes the civilian council. The motion fails the shinobi council. The motion is vetoed by the Hokage. The motion fails." The Sandaime sighed. "The Hokage dismisses this special session on his own authority. Disperse." The shinobi all stood, nearly as one, and shunshinned away. The civilians made their way out the door opposite the Hokage in a more conventional fashion, and the Hokage sat wearily in his chair for another minute, then left.

* * *

Uzumaki Naruto walked into the Academy, where there was an uproar. He would guess that few of his classmates had been up and about sufficiently early to actually see it, but the sight of perhaps twenty-five bleached-white civilian merchants running frantically back home from their shops to wash off had gotten into the rumor mill with glee. As he walked into the classroom, a wave of, if not silence, _less noise_ swept out away from his point of entry, those students who noticed his entrance and had inferred his responsibility becoming silent on seeing him. He ignored it, walking straight to his seat and sitting down. He noticed with some satisfaction that the stuck-up bastard was not yet present, probably still cleaning himself off.

Hinata, sitting next to him, blushed slightly at his approach. "Ah...Naruto- kun?"

He turned to her. "Yes, Hinata-chan?"

"You...are you...did you make the flour traps?"

He grinned at her. "Now, Hinata-chan, would I do something like that?"

She looked down, but she was smiling, and there was almost a giggle in her next words. "You should not do such things, Naruto-kun. Makoto-san was very angry."

"Well, I'm very sorry that Hyuuga Makoto-san is angry, and I'm sure the person who laid all those traps did a very bad thing." Naruto smiled at her.

The conversation, so far, had fallen under the cloak of all the other conversations happening at the same time. Now all conversation stopped as Iruka- sensei opened the door and walked into the room. He stopped at his desk and began speaking.

"Class, be silent!" This was mostly a formality, as the class was silent already. "I have instructions to tell the students the following. An incident occurred this morning involving, ah, the gates of the Hyuuga and Uchiha estates, and the doors, front hallways, and bathroom doors of multiple civilian retail establishments throughout the village. The named locations were trapped with rudimentary fuinjutsu flour traps, presumably set up last night. A hunt for the perpetrator is currently ongoing." Several people looked at Naruto, and the majority who did not were clearly exerting heroic willpower to avoid it. "That is all the information available. Thank you. We are now going to begin our lesson," he said with a fulminating glance at Naruto, "with a reexamination of the class' proficiency in the Henge no Jutsu. Please line up at the front of the class."

Several students gave Naruto mild glares at this, which he ignored. Everyone filed up to the front and lined up. It was at this point that Uchiha Sasuke walked in the door. His appearance was not rumpled in the least, for which Naruto had to give him credit, but he gave Naruto a nasty look as he took his place at the end of the line.

Quiet repetitions of "Henge!" filled the classroom as they filed up one by one to complete the jutsu. Naruto basically ignored the other students until it became his turn. He stepped forwards, the form he wanted held in his mind—"Henge!"

The smoke cleared. Iruka, his face suddenly twitching, was looking at a transformation that was, indeed, a perfect copy of him—except that he was wearing white pajamas embroidered with bright pink rabbits.

Naruto-as-Iruka grinned. "So, sensei, do I pass?"

Iruka twitched several more times before replying. Naruto wasn't sure whether he was holding back amusement or annoyance, but if he had read Iruka correctly before, it would be amusement. Iruka's deadpan reply seemed to confirm it. "I'll mark your henge as 'proficient' and your ability to respect a teacher as 'needs work'," he said. "Get back to your seat already." Naruto released the transformation and walked back.

* * *

Naruto walked into the Hokage's office, his movements painful. Maybe that trap on the Uchiha compound hadn't been such a good idea after all—Sasuke-teme had beaten him _bloody_ in taijutsu practice that day. He might almost believe that he had touched a nerve.

Ah, well. He would have to console himself with the thought that he could easily have replaced the flour in the trap with a few kunai or an explosive tag. There was more to being a ninja than the ability to punch people efficiently.

The old man was sitting behind his desk, writing something. He looked up as Naruto walked in. "Hello, Naruto. Thank you for coming."

Naruto grinned. "Hi, ojiisan!"

The Hokage smiled at Naruto and gestured him to sit. "Now, we need to talk about all those flour traps."

Naruto burst out in mock indignation. "Hey! How do you know it was _me_ who set those?"

The Hokage sighed. "Did you?"

"Well, yes. But I'm offended that you would _assume_ I did!"

"Your offense is noted and completely ignored. Now, back to the traps. Have you been going further than I gave you permission to? Trap seals are past that. You shouldn't be able to do anything with a seal without activating it yourself."

Naruto smirked broadly at the memory. "Oh, yeah! No, I haven't been reading ahead. What I did was I used this old and kinda broken storage seal, and I wrote it on two different pieces of paper, and then when someone hit the tripwire it yanked them apart, so the seal just got really broken, and that old broken storage seal makes all its stuff like explode out if it's broken without chakra activating. So yeah."

The Hokage smiled. "Interesting. I would not have expected that. So. You haven't been going too far ahead, which is good. There's still the matter of the flour you stole."

Naruto sighed. "Ojiisan, the guy's an asshole."

The Hokage nodded. "I'm aware of that, I've been dealing with him in council all morning, thanks to you."

Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Sorry, ojiisan."

"Asshole or not, Naruto, there are strict laws regarding ninjas victimizing civilians. I can keep you away from those because you're not technically a ninja yet. I wouldn't, if I didn't know you were deliberately targeting people who treated you shabbily. But in any event, I've guaranteed compensation from the village to the man who owns that bakery. In punishment for theft, Uzumaki Naruto, I am fining you by the amount which the village will pay in compensation. This payment will come in the form of half your living stipend and mission payments from now until the debt is paid."

Naruto groaned. "Ojiisaaaan...."

The Hokage smiled. "Off the record, Naruto, I think it was quite a well-conceived prank, and shows impressive knowledge of fuinjutsu. However, if you're going to break laws, you have to be prepared to serve the consequence. Dismissed."

Naruto got to his feet reluctantly. "Hai, ojiisan."

The Hokage waved him out. "Goodbye, Naruto."

* * *

Naruto sat in the Academy classroom next to Hinata, sweating. It was the day of the final exam, and Iruka had chosen the Bunshin no Jutsu for the technique to test on. _Just my luck...the thing I've never practiced at all!_ Hinata was called first. She went off after quietly wishing him good luck. None of the people who were called came back, so he couldn't ask her how she had done. _Drat, drat, drat..._ He fidgeted until he was called.

Iruka-sensei and Mizuki-sensei were in the room alone, Iruka standing behind a table full of new hitai-ite, Mizuki beside him. Naruto walked up to the spot in front of the table.

Iruka smiled. "All right, Naruto, show me a Bunshin no Jutsu. You should be able to create at least three clones."

Naruto gulped and concentrated. He formed the appropriate seals, then, concentrating chakra, he yelled "Bunshin no Jutsu!" He felt a chakra drain and, panicking lest he not give it enough, pushed more chakra at the technique. There was a sudden release, but it felt warped, somehow. Naruto waited for the smoke to clear, only to see a single clone, looking like a slightly bleached zombie, lying beside him. He groaned.

Iruka had raised an eyebrow. "Really? Your henge was better than that...Unfortunately, Naruto, this does not satisfy the requirements. You fail."

Naruto groaned more loudly and walked out of the room.

* * *

Naruto sat on the swing outside, dejected. He had failed. His life was just going along perfectly well, and then this happened. Why did he have to fail?

Hinata had come up to him earlier, correctly interpreting his saddened demeanor. She had offered him good wishes, hopes to see him again. It was kind of her. She had seemed almost as dejected by his failure as he was. She, of course, had passed—whether or not her actual fighting style would ever use anything so pedestrian as the Academy jutsu, it would be the ultimate shame for any Hyuuga to fail the Academy test.

Naruto was sitting there, trying and failing to think coherently about what he would do next, when Mizuki-sensei approached him.

"You shouldn't blame Iruka-sensei, you know," he said. "He's trying to ensure that you become stronger."

"I don't," said Naruto, his voice muffled by his arms. "I know he couldn't have done anything different...it's just, I don't know what to do now."

"Ah, that's hard," said Mizuki. "Having to stay back a year, not with your friends anymore...it would be a great pity."

Naruto groaned—this seemed to be a common vocalization of his lately. "I know. I just can't figure it out. I just wish...I wish I hadn't failed."

Mizuki waited, just the right amount of time. "Well, you know...."

* * *

Naruto sat in a forest clearing, a huge, elaborate scroll sitting in front of him. The Kage Bunshin no Jutsu had been difficult to learn—difficult, indeed—but he had done it. In only an hour, too. He sat back, nearly exhausted and panting, but with a wide grin on his face. He could graduate, now. He wouldn't need to skip a year, wouldn't need to fall behind; he could surprise Hinata-chan and make her smile.

Fast approaching footsteps through the trees alerted him. Iruka-sensei jumped down from within them, landing on both feet in the clearing just ahead. Naruto grinned broadly at him...but there was something wrong. Iruka's face was tense, and he looked at Naruto almost coldly. "Naruto! What are you doing with that scroll?"

"Ne, Iruka-sensei, that's the secondary graduation test, isn't it? I learned a jutsu! Now I get to graduate, right?"

Iruka looked at him as if he had grown another head. "Where in Kami's name did you get that idea?"

"Mizuki-sensei told me! He said that if I got this scroll and learned a jutsu out of it, I could graduate along with the other kids! That...wasn't...." Naruto stopped talking in reaction to Iruka's suddenly horrified face.

"Naruto! Get out of here! Mizuki tricked you, he's using you to steal the scroll! Run!"

Naruto, suddenly horrified, looked around in fear, but it was too late. A volley of kunai flew out of the trees, straight towards him. He was moving, but he couldn't move fast enough—the knives were going to hit him—

Iruka ran at him and shoved him out of the way, taking the kunai himself. He was slammed back against the wall of the building behind, a kunai through his leg and another in his arm, breathing hard.

Mizuki landed on a tree branch at the edge of the clearing. He was wearing two oversized shuriken on his back, and his face was twistedly triumphant.

"Iruka! I didn't plan for _you _to find him. But," he grinned nastily, "you're weak. I can kill you right after I kill him." He pointed at Iruka, then Naruto with a kunai.

Iruka looked up, chest heaving, still standing. "You call me...(cough)...weak, but what does it say about (cough) you if you're using Academy students to do your stealing for you?"

Mizuki scowled, a horrible expression. "Oh, I can recognize the thing's talents. Right before I do the village a favor by killing it. One last favor...won't it be nice?"

Naruto looked up suddenly. Mizuki noticed. "Oh, the thing hears. Are you curious, brat? Curious why I call you that?" He grinned dementedly. "Curious why the whole village hates you? Curious why _Iruka_ hates you?"

Naruto whispered. "No..."

Mizuki did not hear. "I'll tell you. Do you know what happened on your birthday, brat? Twelve years ago, the Nine-Tailed Fox attacked this village. The Yondaime Hokage gave his life to defeat it—but he couldn't _kill _it, brat. He could only seal it. He sealed it into a child. You. You are the nine-tailed fox! You killed everyone twelve years ago! You killed Iruka's parents! They all hate you. Everyone hates you. Demon!"

Naruto stood up, slowly. "No..."

Resolve shot through his mind. Mizuki had lied to him, had told him that he _was _the fox. No doubt Mizuki had not known that he already knew about the seal, so he was guilty of deliberately violating the Sandaime's law. Most of all, Mizuki had hurt Iruka.... He would die in pain.

Naruto began to laugh. "Hah! You thought _that_ would faze me?"

Mizuki scowled and jumped down from the tree. "I don't care. Die, demon!" He took the huge shuriken off his back and hefted it. Then threw it at Naruto. It turned from a static, four-pointed blade to a spinning, flying disc of death. Naruto could see Iruka, off to the side, crouching, preparing to jump into the way, to take the blow. The shuriken spun towards him as Iruka flew over from the right...and Naruto simply stepped out of the way, knocking Iruka down and letting the shuriken fly harmlessly past into a tree.

He laughed further. "You call me demon? You think me demon? Then know a demon!" He pulled a kunai from his holster, pulled one of his own, home-made explosive tags out of a pocket, wrapped the note around the handle of the kunai. Then he clenched it in his teeth and crossed his fingers.

"TAJUU KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUTSU!"

There was a burst of smoke that eclipsed the whole clearing. When it cleared, the clearing, the trees around, the roof of the building, were all covered in copies of Naruto. The only clear space was a small circle around Mizuki, who looked around frantically, suddenly absolutely horrified. Each clone was glaring at him with death in their eyes...and each clone still had a kunai with an explosive tag wrapped around the handle clenched in its teeth.

The twenty or so clones closest to Mizuki activated their tags and threw them at Mizuki. He managed to jump out of the way in time, and a cloud of red-glowing tags converged where he had been, then exploded hugely. Mizuki, still in the air, was a sitting target for the next twenty clones doing the same thing. This time, most of the kunai hit. Mizuki was wreathed in red for a moment before the tags exploded. A mangled body was catapulted out of the blast, Mizuki barely recognizable, his clothes burned through.

Mizuki was almost certainly dead by this point, but that didn't stop the remainder of the clones. Each one threw their kunai straight at Mizuki's body. They hit as he topped his arc, a hundred little red-glowing motes congregating on him.

Then they exploded.

By some quirk of position, this explosion sent Mizuki down instead of up. His body, now completely unrecognizable, shot straight down from the sky and collided with the ground. The explosion, high above the forest, blew leaves off the trees. Then there was silence.

The clones all dispersed, one by one. The original Naruto stood there, silent, staring at Mizuki's body. He was horrified. He had meant to kill Mizuki, but...he hadn't intended such...such _overkill_.

His voice, when it came, was almost, but not quite emotionless. "Guess I went a little too hard, huh."

Iruka, still sitting on the ground, gaped at him.

Then Naruto noticed something. There, on the ground around Mizuki, was a loose grid of spidery lines. He looked around, beginning to panic. The lines. The horribly familiar lines. They were everywhere...they were coming back!

Naruto crumpled, screaming, and clenched his eyes shut.

* * *

The Hokage sat in a side room off his office, one with a bed in it. He couldn't imagine why there was a superfluous bedroom here, but it was useful. Naruto lay on the bed, his eyes closed. Iruka sat beside him on a different chair.

Mizuki's body had been collected. The Hokage had seen it, before it was disposed of. Naruto was certainly powerful. He hoped the experience hadn't been too painful for the boy.

Iruka had just finished his report of what had happened. He had had to knock Naruto out to carry him back here; any attempt to move him while conscious had resulted in his struggling wildly to escape. The Hokage had brought him in here; he was the only one who knew how to deal with Naruto's Kyuubi-induced craziness.

The Hokage turned to Naruto, still unconscious, and sighed. Time to try and help the boy. He reached out to his forehead, medical chakra flickering on his hand, and woke him up.

Naruto's eyes opened. They flicked wildly around the room, and Naruto tensed up. Before he could move or scream, the Hokage had finished the seals. "Kokuangyo no jutsu!" Naruto relaxed in the sudden darkness.

The Hokage spoke. "Naruto. Can you hear me?"

It took a moment for him to reply. "I hear you, ojiisan. What's happening?"

"I've placed you under a genjutsu to prevent you seeing things. You've been acting like you did that time two years ago. Iruka just got back from the forest with you. What's happening?"

"Ojiisan...they came back. I had just killed Mizuki and then the lines came back." A note of strain entered Naruto's voice talking about them, even without seeing. The Hokage made his voice as gentle as possible.

"It's all right, Naruto. You can't see them now. Try to remain calm."

He paused for several breaths before continuing. "I've heard what happened from Iruka. You don't need to talk about it. I'd like to ask you about the lines. All right?"

Naruto nodded, still lying on the bed, his eyes open, if unseeing. "All right. I just...I had just...killed him, and his body fell down, and then I was looking at it...and I saw the lines again, and...remembered...." He shuddered. "And I guess kinda went crazy...and then the next thing I remember is waking up here."

The Hokage nodded, before remembering that Naruto couldn't see him. "All right, Naruto. Iruka is here. I'm going to explain to him what's going on, and then I'll want to ask you something. All right?"

"Okay, ojiisan."

The Hokage turned to Iruka. "This is related to something that happened to Naruto two years ago. You remember when he was absent?"

Iruka nodded.

"He was absent because he was ambushed by a couple of _former_ chuunin in an alley and beaten. Really badly. And during his recovery, he started seeing some sort of manifestation, a grid of lines on everything, and later on he started to see things and...people fall apart along the lines. It took some toll on his mind. The effect went away after he was recovered; we suspect it's related to the fox."

Iruka nodded again, his face sober. "So...those are the lines he's talking about?"

"They are. We know it's not a genjutsu or anything, I had Kurenai in to check on him. We don't really know anything about the effect, but it happened when he was healing up from the worst he was ever injured in his life and when he had just used up a whole lot of chakra, both times when you'd expect the fox's chakra to be active in him. And...there's something else."

He turned to Naruto and spoke. "Naruto, something happened two years ago. You had just gone crazy, and you were able to cut up a side table with a kunai. Do you remember?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah...I do. That kind of convinced me it wasn't a dream, when I woke up the day afterwards and saw it still cut up. What about it?"

"Naruto, I'm going to take the genjutsu off you now. If you start seeing anything break I can put it back on you, but I want to check something. Okay?"

Naruto hesitated before nodding. "Okay. Go ahead."

The Hokage broke the technique, and Naruto's eyes moved again with purpose. He sat up. "What did you want to check?"

"Can you still see lines?"

Naruto looked around. "Yeah...it's a little fainter. Like I can't see them on something until I really look. But yeah." He took a deep breath.

"Do you remember what you did when you broke the table two years ago?"

"Yeah. I was trying to stab the line. I don't know what I thought it would have done. But the kunai just kind of traced along it, and the table broke. Same thing happened with the legs."

The Hokage handed Naruto a kunai which he took from his own holster. Then he cast about for something to test it on. "Iruka, would you mind standing? I'd like to use that chair."

"Not at all, Hokage-sama." Iruka stood, and the Hokage reached over to his chair and handed it to Naruto.

"I want you to do the same thing that you did two years ago with the desk. Just trace the lines on the chair. See what happens."

Naruto took the chair and set it on its legs in front of him. Peering at it closely, he frowned and placed his kunai on the edge of the seat, then traced it along the top to the other side. The Hokage could clearly see that he wasn't pressing hard enough even to scratch the paint. Then, without warning, as Naruto reached the other side of the seat and removed the knife, the chair split in two pieces along the line Naruto had traced. His eyes widened as the pieces fell over, no longer stable with only two legs apiece.

He picked up the front half of the chair and tried again, this time tracing along the seat between the two legs. The piece broke again, and the half that Naruto wasn't holding fell to the ground. Looking fascinatedly down at the fragment, Naruto cut diagonally along the leg, and it, too, broke, showing a wide stripe of unpainted wood. Then he cut it again. Then again.

The Hokage caught Naruto's hand before he could bisect the chair leg any further. "I think that's enough."

Naruto jerked suddenly, then relaxed, dropping the kunai. "Sorry, ojiisan. Can you put the darkness back now? It's...a little bit weird."

The Hokage nodded and repeated the genjutsu. "Well...this is very interesting. Naruto, I think that the lines should go away soon, as your chakra builds up again and pushes out the fox's. We can just wait the rest of the night. You should sleep, if you can."

Naruto nodded and lay back on the bed. "All right, ojiisan."

The Hokage looked at Iruka, and they exchanged a nod.

* * *

It was some five hours later that Naruto woke up. He opened his eyes to find that the old man had canceled the darkness genjutsu sometime during the night. Early morning light shone through the window, and Naruto jumped out of bed, suddenly energized.

The room was empty when he woke, but as he got up he heard movement outside the door, and a moment later Iruka-sensei walked in. He grinned brightly as he saw Naruto. "Hey, Naruto. Sit there and close your eyes." He indicated a spot on the floor.

Naruto sat, and closed his eyes as ordered. There was a sound as Iruka knelt on the floor in front of him, and he felt something pulling on his forehead, then a tension around his head. Iruka fiddled with something at the back of his head for a moment, then pulled away. "You can open your eyes now."

Naruto opened his eyes. Iruka, still grinning, sat before him. "I, Umino Iruka, as the teacher of Uzumaki Naruto and in consultation with the Sandaime Hokage, do now declare that Uzumaki Naruto has successfully graduated the Ninja Academy."

Naruto groped blindly at his forehead for a moment and felt a familiarly engraved plate of metal. He grinned hugely, barely refraining from whooping with delight, as he jumped on Iruka and hugged him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, I go into unnecessary detail about the canon-compliance of the work, only to realize later that, probably, no one actually cares. Sigh.
> 
> So, for one thing, it's never quite explained how Naruto could be on his third attempt to pass the Academy final when he seems to be the same age as the rest of the Rookie 9 and there's no mention of any of them failing earlier tests or of Naruto repeating years. The way I'm framing it, in canon Naruto twice tried to test out of the Academy early because he was impatient to be a genin and he had nothing to like about the status quo in the Academy. Here, he didn't try the earlier tests, because he wasn't quite as miserably unhappy during the Academy because he made contact with Hinata and became friends with her. For another thing, having actually had a taste of interpersonal relationships that didn't suck, he wasn't so either 'tolerant' or 'annoyingly persistent' as to continue asking Sakura out after she repeatedly hit him; you can imagine that sometime during the timeskip he asked her out, was rebuffed firmly, then just kind of stopped.
> 
> His pranks are more targeted now on individuals; in canon, he didn't know about the fox until the Mizuki incident, and so not knowing why everyone hated him, I have to imagine he had a little bit of hidden guilt wondering if he deserved it. Now, knowing why everyone hates him and that it's completely irrational, he has no qualms about putting them in their place.


	3. Bells

After receiving his hitai-ite, Naruto was sufficiently euphoric to run out and start doing missions that day. However, as the Hokage explained, that was not, yet, an option.

Naruto walked into the room. It was one of the Academy classrooms, but not one that Naruto had ever frequented. Two-person desks filled the room in tiers. He was not late, but the majority of his class had already arrived.

Hinata was sitting at a desk next to someone else, whose name he did not know. He stopped beside her desk and grinned at her. "Hey, Hinata-chan!"

Hinata looked quickly up at him, as if startled. She must have been really distracted—normally even without her eyes she could see most of the things around her. Her eyes flicked first to his face, then to the hitai-ite around his forehead. "N-Naruto-kun! You graduated?" She smiled brightly, making him feel suddenly almost as absurdly happy again as when he had gotten the hitai-ite from Iruka-sensei.

"Yeah! Some, uh, some stuff happened," and here his smile faltered for a moment, "last night, which I can't really explain, but it worked out with me getting a merit promotion. So yeah!" He grinned broadly again, casting around for a seat. The one next to Hinata-chan was already taken, so he sat down in the nearest empty one—which, he noticed only as he sat down, put him next to Sasuke-teme. Great. Sasuke turned and looked at him levelly as he sat, but there was no particular malice in the gaze, and in only a moment he turned back to staring at nothing in particular. Naruto hmphed quietly at being ignored, and settled firmly into ignoring the Uchiha in turn.

There was a clatter from the door at the rear of the room, and the sounds of loud female argument. Naruto did not turn around. He recognized the voices of Sakura and whatever-her-name-was who always fought with her, both of whom he disliked, Sakura in particular for _hitting_ him when he tried to ask her out once a year ago, and the other just on principle for her ardent and painfully obviously unrequited pursuit of "her Sasuke-kun". He ignored them, too, until Sakura stormed up beside him and demanded that he move, so that she could sit beside, oh joy, "her Sasuke-kun".

"What?" said Naruto, looking up, rather confused. "No. I'm sitting here. Find somewhere else." He turned back to looking forward, expecting the matter to be finished, and so was startled and annoyed when Sakura grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him out of the chair, dropping him behind it.

Sakura was about to sit down in the chair she had just yanked him out of, when the other girl, the blonde, moved up and disputed her right to it. Sakura brushed her off, claiming first-come, first-served. At this, one of the other girls who already had a seat, who had begun to pay attention when Sakura had knocked him out of the chair, stood up and claimed seniority over Sakura. This set off a wave of other fangirls vacating their seats and disputing who had entered the room first. Many of them had, indeed, come in before Naruto, which set him to wondering why they hadn't just sat beside their precious Uchiha when the seat was empty.

The dispute was approaching the point where it might very well have erupted into physical combat when Naruto stood up. He was still behind the desk, standing between the mob of fangirls and the Uchiha, whose level stare at nothing had become distinctly annoyed and long-suffering.

"OI!" said Naruto, very loudly. This preempted several volleys in the War of the Fangirls, and they all became silent and stared at him. Naruto illustrated his words with large, pointed gestures as he spoke. " _I_ ," said he, pointing at himself, "am going to sit _here._ " He indicated the chair that was the object of contention. "The reason for this is that _I actually sat here._ So, all of you, kindly, _buzz off_." He sat down and pointedly stared ahead.

The fangirls were, for a moment, shocked silent. Then Sakura growled in anger and again grabbed at Naruto's wrist to deprive him of the seat. She was just about to yank him off the chair again when he broke her grip, causing her to reel backwards for a moment before regaining her balance.

Things might have gone badly for Naruto at that point, being at the focus of the ire of the fangirlish mob, if Iruka had not at that moment walked in the door. He saw almost a third of the class congregated around a single desk, and loudly cleared his throat.

"EXCUSE ME!" he shouted, his head seeming to grow by a factor of three or so. (Naruto had never figured out if that was some sort of genjutsu or merely a psychological effect of being screamed at by Iruka.) The group of girls turned towards him.

"Will this group of _new ninja_ , now _legally adults_ and considered capable of _acting maturely_ in most situations, please sit down?" said Iruka.

The fangirls dispersed, some grumbling quietly. Sakura made a pointed sniff and moved off to take one of the closest seats to Sasuke, which had actually been occupied by another of the fangirls; that girl disputed the seat for only a moment before finding a different one.

Iruka smiled without a trace of his earlier menace. "Thank you!" He then launched into an explanation of the system of teams, most of which seemed designed to, having stoked the egos of the new genin with their shiny new hitai- ite, cut them back down to size for their participation in the world of real ninja. Naruto tuned most of it out; one could not read any of the village history that he had read in the Konoha archives without both the relatively lowly status of genin and the structure of their teams becoming obvious.

The lecture ended with Iruka's preparation to list off the teams themselves. Naruto perked up and began to pay attention. No one he knew was on any of the first six teams called. Then—

"Team seven. Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke." Naruto groaned quietly to himself. The teme and the annoying fangirl. Well, at least Sasuke- teme was an effective ninja. Hopefully no one would expect them to fight anything for a while.

He had kind of hoped to be on a team with Hinata-chan, but he supposed that they could still get together and spar or something. Hinata-chan was _hard_ ; even though she wasn't nearly as strong as he was, when she turned on her eyes he just couldn't hit her unless he got a lucky shot. He couldn't think of a better way to get faster.

And speaking of which—"Team eight. Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, Aburame Shino." Naruto knew the Kiba kid for that dog which he always carried around on his head, and the Shino kid for, basically, being very tall, and a little bit weird. He hoped they were good teammates for Hinata.

* * *

Naruto sighed. The last team to be chosen had left with their sensei almost fifteen minutes ago, leaving him, the teme and the fangirl alone in the room. Naruto had become bored and started pacing five minutes ago, and Sakura had, much to the Uchiha's quietly expressed annoyance, taken the opportunity to steal the seat next to him.

Sasuke sat in the same position that he had held, without change, for most of the class. He basically ignored Sakura's sitting next to him and sneaking glances at him, and completely ignored Naruto's pacing and muttering.

After a good hour of this, Naruto was quite thoroughly annoyed, as well as bored. Weren't the jounin-senseis supposed to be good role models? Why was he being so late?

With a snort of annoyance, Naruto came to a decision. He hunted up a sheet of paper in the desk at the front of the room, then grabbed the canister of mostly- spent chalk from the floor below the blackboard at the front and sat down at a desk. He removed a brush and ink—the basic sealing kit—from his pockets and began to sketch the same obsolete storage seal that he had used in the flour traps. When the seal was done, he dumped the canister of chalk onto it and sealed it inside with an application of chakra. Then he set the seal at the top of the doorframe, standing on a chair to do so, and attached it to both the frame and the door so that the door would tear it apart if it opened.

The others had been watching this work, being the most interesting thing happening in the classroom. Sakura was taken aback by the sealing and did not comment, though she evidently wished to. Sasuke turned to look at the sealed paper stuck through the top of the doorframe.

"A jounin isn't going to fall for that trick, fuin-dobe."

Naruto grinned brightly. "Well, you never know."

Sakura decided at this point to step in. "Idiot! You're laying a trap for our sensei! You're going to get in trouble!"

Naruto rolled his eyes. "He's late, it's annoying. Even if he doesn't fall for it it may be entertaining to watch."

Sakura was about to continue the debate when they heard a footstep outside the door. All three genin quieted and turned to look. A hand in a blue, fingerless glove pushed the door open. The seal tore in two, and there was a minor explosion. Chalk dust filtered down from above, and there was a momentary rain of used-up chalk ends.

A white-haired man walked into the room through the now-dispersing cloud of chalk dust. Oddly enough, he didn't seem to get any of it on him; it would have been hard to tell if there was chalk in his hair, but one would assume that it would show up on his blue face mask.

All three genin stared at him for a moment before he spoke. "Well, I have to say that as a first impression, this leaves something to be desired."

There was silence for a moment, and the jounin spoke again. "Meet on the roof of this building in five minutes." Then, without ceremony, he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

* * *

The three genin sat on benches atop the Academy building, while the white- haired, masked man leaned against the railing around the edge. The jounin's face was unreadable, but he spoke in a mildly bored tone.

"So, why don't we introduce ourselves? Tell us your names, your hobbies, what you like and don't like, your goals. How about you, Pink Hair?"

Sakura bristled at the name. "Shouldn't you introduce yourself first, sensei?"

The jounin nodded. "Okay. My name is Hatake Kakashi. I like some things, but there are things I dislike. I...have some hobbies. My goals...." He was quiet for a moment, then continued. "Okay, Pink Hair, your turn."

Sakura glared at him, but spoke anyway. "My name is Haruno Sakura. I like...." she blushed slightly and looked at Sasuke. "I don't like loud-mouthed brats who can't keep quiet." This with a glare at Naruto. "My hobbies...." she blushed again and looked at Sasuke. "Goals...I suppose I want a family some day." This with another glance at Sasuke.

Kakashi nodded. "Okay, your turn, Rudimentary Seal Traps."

Naruto grinned at the reference. "My name is Uzumaki Naruto! I like ramen, Iruka-sensei, Hokage-ojiisan, and the bit of the Archive with the seals in it! I don't like...." here his enthusiasm flagged for a moment, "well, a lot of people are idiots. My hobbies are eating ramen and figuring out fun ways of using seals! My goal is to become Hokage!"

Kakashi raised one eyebrow, which was the only expression, Naruto thought, that anyone could actually read on his face, and nodded. "Okay, Staring At Nothing. Go."

Sasuke shifted, a flicker of annoyance crossing his face. "My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I like...well, not many things. I dislike weakness," this with a glance at Sakura, who squeaked slightly, "and tricks." This with a glance at Naruto, who glared at him. "My hobby is training. My goal...my ambition is to revive my clan, and kill a certain person." At this, Naruto's glare turned to a mixture of interest and alarm; he stared at Sasuke for a moment, as if he would say something, but was cut off by Kakashi.

"Okay, well, at least you three aren't boring. So. We begin tomorrow, meeting at 5 A.M. at training ground 13. It's...a training mission of sorts. Don't be late. And," he finished, standing up and turning around, "don't eat breakfast. You'll just throw it up."

* * *

Naruto showed up at the bridge leading to training ground #13 at five precisely the next morning. This was quite a bit earlier than he was used to getting up; he had had to sleep early to make sure he wasn't tired for it. Sakura was already there, standing on the bridge, and after only a few minutes Sasuke-teme showed up as well. Then, of course, Kakashi didn't...show...up. They had waited for almost an hour before Naruto lost patience.

"Don't be late? Don't be late, he says? What's he doing telling us not to be late?" Naruto growled, pacing back and forth on the bridge. "We weren't late! _He's_ late! Why's he late?!"

Sakura was also annoyed, though she managed to refrain from fidgeting. "If he doesn't show up then I won't get the chance to prove how strong I am to Sasuke- kun...." she muttered, almost to herself. Sasuke's comment about weakness the day before had nettled her.

Naruto lost what remained of his patience after another hour. The sun had risen some time ago; Sakura sat still with a growing look of annoyance on her face, while Sasuke-teme just stood, apparently not noticing the passage of time. Naruto got out his sealing brush and ink and started drawing on the wood of the bridge. "Rudimentary Seal Traps...I'll show him Rudimentary Seal Traps..." he muttered angrily as he worked. Behind him, and unnoticed, Sasuke turned to look at him, staring rather intently at the matrix of seals that he was constructing.

Naruto finished the seal, which looked like another storage seal, then pulled a flash bomb from the pocket where he kept Random Ninja Tools. A tiny seal, just a single symbol, went on the flash bomb, and Naruto pushed it into the storage seal with a flash of chakra. Then he took up a position further down the bridge, across from Sasuke, and drew another seal on the rail near his hand.

He looked up for a moment. "Sasuke, Sakura, when I set this off you might want to close your eyes. I'm going to do it as soon as I see Kakashi-sensei stepping onto the bridge."

Sasuke looked at him with more interest than Naruto had ever seen him show. "What does it do?"

Naruto grinned. "It's a self-triggering storage seal. The basis for a lot of trap seals—you can launch something out of it like an explosive tag or a flash bomb and it'll set it off for you. But Hokage-ojiisan won't let me do trap seals yet," this with a near pout, "so I have to set it off myself."

Sasuke looked at him more intently for a moment, then shook his head. "Fuin- dobe."

Naruto rolled his eyes and stood, fidgeting, next to the trigger seal on the rail.

He managed to stand, ready to trigger the trap, for two more hours, probably a record for Naruto standing still. Eventually, however, he also became bored and sat. It was half an hour more after that when Kakashi, oblivious to Naruto's careful work in preparing a trap for him, appeared on the wrong side of the bridge, with a bright "Good morning!"

"You're late!" yelled Sakura and Naruto, almost in unison. The three genin moved off the bridge to stand in front of Kakashi. Kakashi made precisely no apology for his tardiness, but held up a pair of bells on a string.

"All right! So, the first thing I should tell you is that this is, actually, the final test to become genin. If you fail this, you go back to the Academy. Okay?" This was met with disbelief from Sakura.

"So what was the point of that final exam?" she grumbled.

"Ah, that selects the students who are capable of becoming genin. This selects the student who _will_ become genin. So here's the test. You are going to try and attack me. What you are trying to do is take these bells," he shook the two bells back and forth, and they jingled cheerily, "from here." He tied the string to his belt. "If you have a bell before noon, measured when the sun gets to _there_ ," he indicated an arbitrary point in the sky, "then you get lunch. Anyone who doesn't have a bell doesn't get any food. Oh, and they have to go back to the Academy." Kakashi's expression was unreadable, of course, but his voice was gleeful. "Any questions?"

Sakura spoke first. "But sensei, there are only two bells, and three of us."

"How observant of you, Sakura! I guess one of you has a problem, then."

There was a momentary, heavy silence before Sasuke spoke. "Sensei, are we to fight all out?"

Kakashi nodded. "Believe me, you'll need to. Don't hold back on my account."

Naruto raised a hand. "Ah, sensei...last time I fought all out...uh...I didn't really like what happened," he said, his voice uncomfortable.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. It might even have been both eyebrows, but the one was hidden under his hitai-ite. "Ah. Touji Mizuki, wasn't it?" Naruto nodded. "You don't need to worry about that. Fight as hard as you like. I won't be caught so easily." Naruto nodded in vague relief.

Sakura and Sasuke both had been looking at Naruto oddly during this exchange. Before they could ask any questions, Kakashi cut them off. "Any more questions? No? Good. The exercise begins in three—two—one—and now." He jumped away from them, landing in the middle of the clearing off the bridge.

Naruto stood and shook himself. "All right!" he said, and charged at Kakashi.

As he charged, he formed a familiar cross hand seal. " _Kage bunshin no jutsu_!" he yelled, and ten clones appeared next to him, charging as well.

Kakashi found himself under assault by all eleven bodies. It was no contest. He moved more quickly than Naruto had ever seen, blocking every blow aimed at him and dispersing the clones right and left. None of them even came close to the bells on his belt. When Naruto himself attacked, going for the bells rather than any hits on Kakashi, he found himself flying backwards from a particularly hard blow to the forehead. He landed and skidded along the ground, panting.

Then stood. "All right, let's turn it up a notch! _Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu_!" This time, some thirty clones formed. Half of them charged, while half held back. The half that charged went straight after the bell just like the previous wave, and met a similar lack of success. The half that held back were loading kunai with explosive tags. As Kakashi cut through the first wave of clones with casual ease, the second wave all threw exploding kunai straight at him. Kakashi, not surprised, jumped straight up, letting the exploding kunai land where he was and destroy the remaining assault clones. None of the clones had any kunai ready to attack Kakashi while he was a sitting target in midair, and Naruto cursed himself for not making more.

Kakashi landed unmolested and began taking out clones. Predictably enough, none of them could touch him; he plowed straight through the group of them before he came to Naruto himself. This time, Naruto drew a kunai himself and stabbed at Kakashi with it. He blocked the stroke aside with the armor plate on one glove, then turned the overextended arm into a brutal over-the-shoulder throw that left Naruto upside-down against a tree.

"Good! You've gotten lesson one: fight to kill. You can take the bells off my corpse," said Kakashi loudly. "Or you could, if you could actually kill me." Naruto, disoriented from the sudden flip and near concussion, fell over sideways, groaning.

Sasuke and Sakura had disappeared from the bridge long since. It was at this point that Sasuke came out from cover and attacked Kakashi, hoping that his taijutsu—well superior to the dobe's, anyway—could succeed where Naruto's clones had failed. Unfortunately, that hope was dashed. Kakashi was too fast. Sasuke managed to avoid any knockout blows like the ones dealt Naruto, but he couldn't get close to the bells. After two minutes of straight assault, he had gotten one good shot at them, and had missed.

Giving taijutsu up as a bad job, Sasuke jumped back and made a series of seals. " _Katon: Goukakyuu no jutsu_!" he muttered, inhaling, and shot a huge fireball out of his mouth at Kakashi. Naruto, having recovered from his disorientation while Sasuke was fighting, sat up and watched, mouth open. "Wow..." he muttered. "I have _so_ got to learn that."

The fireball cleared away, leaving a circled of charred, scorched earth. Kakashi was nowhere to be seen. Sasuke looked around, scowling but somewhat panicky. He swiveled around quickly, staring to both sides, above, and then turning again to cover his back. "Where is he?" he muttered.

He stood still for too long. A hand came up out of the ground where he stood, grabbing his ankle. Sasuke panicked for a moment, trying to break the grip, but failed. Then, somehow, it managed to—drag him down into the ground? What?

Sasuke's head stuck out of the middle of a bare patch of earth as Kakashi rose from the ground as if it were liquid. He crouched in front of Sasuke's apparently disembodied head. "In case you missed it," said Kakashi, dry as dust, "I was below you."

Naruto, completely recovered by this time, started laughing uproariously. "Impressive, teme!" he yelled, getting to his feet.

Sasuke, luckily for his remaining dignity, was facing sufficiently near Naruto that he could focus on him. "Like you did any better, dobe!" he shouted, annoyed. Kakashi stood and faced Naruto as he approached.

"Sorry, Sasuke-teme," said Naruto, getting over his laughter. "It was impressive. It's just also really funny."

Sasuke scowled at him.

Naruto stood straighter, and grinned. "Now I'll show you how it's done. _Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!_ " With a much greater puff of smoke, clones of Naruto surrounded Kakashi and Sasuke's head to three ranks deep. Each clone began preparing an explosive tag on a kunai.

Kakashi, knowing what was about to happen, jumped over the group of Narutos to land outside the ring, leaving Sasuke out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, this left him close to several clones, who immediately threw glowing kunai at him. He jumped again, as quickly as he could, and dodged the first volley. Then the second rank of clones threw at him. A hundred kunai converged on him, each glowing with the light of an explosive tag, just as the first volley exploded below him. Kakashi quickly made a single seal. When the smoke of the second explosion cleared, a badly charred chunk of log fell to the ground.

Clones fanned out, looking for Kakashi. Several approached the bridge over which one arrived at the training ground from the rest of Konoha. Naruto still stood in the ring, approximately where he had been.

Kakashi appeared over the bridge, dropping down out of a tree. Two bells still dangled from his belt where they had been. He walked slowly towards the bridge, as if daring the clones near its other end to attack. A clone shouted, and soon most of the original big mob of them was gathering around the end of the bridge.

The original Naruto pushed through the mob to the head of it. "Hey! Kakashi- sensei! Had enough yet?"

Kakashi laughed dryly. "Are you going to stand there talking, or are you going to take a bell?"

Naruto was on the bridge by now. He glanced around, looking for anything he could use to his advantage, then saw it.

He had to stall some more. "Hey, why aren't you attacking? You're only outnumbered fifty to one."

Kakashi rolled his one visible eye. "You can only taunt someone without sounding _ridiculous_ if you have even the slightest chance of _beating_ them." With that, he charged.

Naruto moved forwards and to the side, several of his clones moving up to fill the gap. Just as Kakashi reached the bridge, Naruto slapped the rail in a burst of chakra and shouted "GO!"

The seal trap Naruto had laid that morning, forgotten when Kakashi had apparently bypassed it, set off. The specialized storage seal spat a single flash bomb up to eye level, where it detonated. Kakashi's one eye widened, barely, as he saw it; then it went off.

A wave of clones rushed forwards to attack. They crossed the bridge in seconds, then milled around on the other side. Kakashi was nowhere to be seen.

A clone at the rear of the group yelled a warning. Only a few of the clones managed to turn in time to see Kakashi finishing a group of seals, then slamming one hand into the ground. The earth leapt up in a wave to his command, and that wave swept towards the bridge and the mob of clones. As it hit them, they either dissipated immediately or were thrown into the air to dissipate on landing. The wave stopped as it hit the river. Only the few clones on the bridge itself survived.

Kakashi hit them just as hard as he had before. None of the clones survived, or even got near him. Naruto himself was the target of another long throw, back away from the bridge towards Sasuke. He landed, skidded, fell. Kakashi walked up to him.

"Wow! You almost made me work there. Okay, enough of you. Let's see if Sakura can get a bell. Maybe she's worth making genin."

He disappeared in a sudden cloud of smoke.

Naruto stood up, slowly. His body _hurt_ all over. Being repeatedly slammed around by a jounin could, apparently, be considered harmful. He glanced around, checking to see if Kakashi was still around and planning to throw him through pieces of the landscape again, but saw nothing—until he froze, almost panicking, at the sight of countless thin lines on everything in sight.

_Crap. Crap crap crap. It's happening again it's happening again—damn it!_

He hyperventilated for a moment, then made a valiant effort to calm down. _This is not the time to panic—my promotion is riding on this!_ He looked around, forcing himself to keep calm at the sight of more of the lines. _Hokage- ojiisan said that they were related to the fox's chakra, and I just made like three hundred clones and got beat up by Kakashi-sensei. That must be it. Just ignore them, that's the ticket...._

He looked around again, this time forcing himself to ignore the lines and concentrate on what he saw. Still no Kakashi. Sasuke's head stuck out of the ground, facing away from him—it must have driven the boy mad to hear what had been going on behind him without being able to see it.

Naruto brooded about the test for a moment. _This is annoying. They can't possibly actually make being able to beat a jounin a condition of becoming genin, that'd just be dumb._ He couldn't beat Kakashi at all; hell, Kakashi hadn't even pulled out any high-level techniques until Naruto got the drop on him with a flash bomb in the presence of an army of his clones. Sasuke couldn't beat Kakashi either, and while Sasuke couldn't pull Naruto's one-man-army trick, he certainly had more techniques—Naruto wouldn't be surprised if Sasuke could beat him even with all his clones, if he had anything else like that fireball.

_I can't beat him. Sasuke can't beat him. There's no way in Hell Sakura could beat him. What's his game?_ It couldn't just be an impossible test; there was no way they'd let jounin-senseis pull that on their prospective teams.

Suddenly an idea came to Naruto, without any real logic behind it. He decided to run with it. Jogging around Sasuke's head, Naruto made the cross hand sign. Four clones materialized behind him.

"Hey, Sasuke-teme."

"Hey, dobe. I assume from Kakashi's monologue that you didn't get it that time either?"

"Yeah. I've come to a bit of a realization."

"What's that?"

"It's impossible."

"What?"

"Look at it. I couldn't beat him. You couldn't beat him. I surprised him with that seal trap I set this morning, and all I got out of it was some really-huge- class earth jutsu and getting thrown across the field again."

"Hn. Why?"

"I don't know. But I figure I'll get you out of there, just on general principles of frustrating Kakashi-sensei's intent." Naruto and his clones dispersed around Sasuke, digging with kunai. The process was annoying and the tools not ideal; several of the clones' kunai dispelled on hitting a rock or something, making it go more slowly. Relatively soon, however, they got Sasuke's arms free, and he then cooperated in freeing his legs.

Naruto dispelled the rest of his clones with a bit of relief as their chakra poured back into his system. Usually he didn't get tired, but this was a little taxing even for him.

Sasuke scrambled out of the newly made hole in the ground, brushing dirt off his clothes. Naruto looked at him and laughed weakly, earning a mild glare.

"It's not that funny, dobe."

Naruto finished laughing and shook his head. "It's not that. But I bet Kakashi- sensei was planning on pulling you out of there with an earth jutsu later on. And it probably would have left you just as clean as he was after he finished, um, hiding underground."

Sasuke grumbled. "Thrice-cursed over-clever teachers...." He looked up. "Did you have a plan other than going back to what we were doing?"

"Not really...but I've kinda been in the archives all the time since two years ago, and they tell you all about these teams, right? Like it looks like the team you were on as a genin is really important later on, they kind of stay together until some of them die, or whatever. And they always talk about teams of three. There's no teams of two anywhere, unless someone on the team died or went rogue."

"Yeah, okay. So he's probably not going to fail only a few of us and keep the others."

"Yeah. I bet that whatever this test is, we either pass it or don't as a team. So I guess there's no harm in working together on it, if we're not fighting each other."

"Why would that do any better than what we've been doing? He's a jounin."

"Well, what if you were to henge into me? Then I could make another bunch of clones, and while he's taking them all out you do that fireball thing again. He wouldn't expect it, might not dodge in time, especially if some clones hold onto him."

Sasuke looked at him with mild surprise. "That's a good idea, actually." He looked around. "The question is, where is he? He said something about Sakura, where's she?"

Naruto shrugged. "I don't know. Easy enough to find." He focused his chakra, more difficult than usual, and formed a cross hand sign. " _Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!_ " A mob of clones appeared around him and immediately scattered.

Naruto staggered suddenly and sat down hurriedly. "All right, that might have been a little much." He shook his head muzzily. He had used quite a bit of chakra there, especially given that he hadn't gotten any of the last mob's chakra back, because Kakashi had destroyed them all. He waited a moment for his head to clear, then stood up, breathing rather more heavily than usual.

"Now I guess we should just wait until one of them comes back."

Sasuke nodded. "Hey, dobe, what is that technique? It's not a regular clone, obviously."

"It's called shadow clones. Physical clones, that dispel after they get hit hard. It takes a buttload of chakra, though."

Sasuke looked at him rather bemusedly and said nothing. Naruto, still tired, felt no particular urge to continue the conversation. He looked around, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, but noticed that with the latest large expenditure of chakra the lines had grown more distinct. There were none on the ground (which was almost a pity, as it would have made it quite a bit easier to dig Sasuke out), but they covered the trees, the rocks, they were all over the bridge.... Naruto closed his eyes momentarily and took a mental step back. _Ignore them. Don't freak out._

Then, suddenly, he shook his head and cursed. "Kami damn it, Kakashi-sensei is an asshole."

Sasuke looked up. "Not that I disagree, but what brought this on?"

"He saw one of my clones and just dispelled it. Kind of painfully. He's this way," said Naruto, moving off at a jog in one direction. Sasuke followed.

"Did you see Sakura?"

"He's got her in some kind of genjutsu. At least I assume that's what it is, since she's just sitting there looking horrified while Kakashi stands in front of her."

Sasuke grunted as they continued on. A moment later, they crossed the boundary into the forest proper, and Naruto jumped up into the trees. Sasuke followed. After perhaps a minute, they stopped.

"We're almost there," said Naruto. "You'd best transform into me now, so we don't lose surprise."

Sasuke nodded and made a quick gesture, transforming into a perfect copy of Naruto. Naruto was inclined to laugh at first; Sasuke-as-Naruto looked at him and gave a very Sasuke-like supercilious look. "Keep going, dobe."

Naruto suppressed his laughs as they moved again. It was only another few hundred feet to the edge of the clearing in which Sakura sat, caught in her genjutsu, while Kakashi stood in front of her maintaining it. Naruto landed in the clearing, Sasuke behind him.

"Hey! Sensei! I don't like being ignored! _Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!_ " Another mob of clones appeared, half in the clearing, half in the branches of the trees. Naruto himself fell into a squat, winded.

The mob of clones, including Sasuke, charged forwards. Kakashi rolled his single visible eye and flashed at them. He began dispelling them, again, left and right, no clone able to get a shot on the bells at his waist. But unbeknownst to him, one clone in the mob was making hand signs.

It happened suddenly. A flash of fire came from within the group of clones, and a huge, roaring ball of it came out to engulf Kakashi and the six clones he was currently engaging. All the clones immediately dispelled, but Sasuke had seen Kakashi right in their midst as the fireball destroyed them. He kept it up until he ran out of breath, and looked at the target.

This one had made an actual crater. None of the clones nearby had survived. Kakashi was nowhere in sight; instead, a blackened log fell to the ground.

Sasuke cursed. "Again? Seriously?" The henge had dispelled when he put as much chakra as he could into the fire jutsu, leaving him again looking like himself. He looked around frantically, unable to find Kakashi.

The genjutsu on Sakura had broken when Kakashi was distracted by the next iteration attack of the clones. She looked around, confused, only to focus suddenly on Sasuke's fireball. Then, seeing his henge dispel, she smiled happily, only for the emotion to turn again to alarm.

"There! Behind you!" The voice was female— _Sakura?_ Sasuke spun around, dodging to one side, barely avoiding a driving punch from Kakashi. Then it was himself versus Kakashi again, Sasuke barely holding out, now on the defensive. Then, suddenly, a clone of Naruto jumped out from behind Kakashi and grabbed him in an armlock, his legs locked around Kakashi's waist. Kakashi faltered, and Sasuke lunged forwards triumphantly, grabbing for the now exposed bells, when he suddenly felt a really odd twisting motion, as if he was being yanked up into the air, but without going upwards. Then, suddenly, the feeling resolved, and _he _was standing in the armlock of a Naruto clone, the clone hanging off his back. Unprepared for the sudden weight, Sasuke fell backwards, landing on the clone.

"Ow!"

Sasuke had expected it to simply dispel, but it hadn't. Its grip had slackened with the fall; Sasuke rolled off and looked at it. "Naruto?"

Naruto lay there, rubbing at his nose. _Okay, not a clone._ "Yeah? That hurt!"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Sorry, dobe. Kakashi-sensei did a kawarimi, again, and switched me into the hold."

Naruto got up, still rubbing his nose. He addressed the white-haired jounin, who was standing right in front of them where Sasuke had been. "You are really annoying, you know that?"

"I work at it." Kakashi looked up at the sky, his voice and affect in no way indicating that he had just been exchanging blows. "And time is up. Sorry, no bells for you. Meet me back at the starting position, all three of you." He disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Sasuke stood. "...Damn it." He looked over at Sakura, who stood under the tree where she had been caught in Kakashi's genjutsu. "Are you all right?"

Sakura blushed and nodded hesitantly.

Naruto grumbled. "Cursedly annoying sensei...let's get going. We probably failed that."

Sasuke nodded and followed Naruto out of the clearing, with Sakura hurrying to catch up.

* * *

Kakashi sat on the ground, reading some sort of orange-covered book. He looked up as the three arrived, and stowed the book somewhere behind his back. Naruto wondered vaguely what it was, but that was the least of his worries as the three of them stood in a line in front of the jounin.

Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow; what could be seen of his expression was sardonic. "How'd you like the test?"

Naruto glared at him. "You're annoying, sensei."

Kakashi rose to his feet. "All right, then. Naruto, you have a lot of chakra, but you should work on some more creative uses for it than 'try to beat people up with fifty clones'. Sasuke, I was startled that you could do the fireball jutsu, but if I can dodge it easily it's not a good time to do it. You did better the second time." He turned to look at Sakura, whose eyes were downcast. "Sakura, you did a good job of hiding at first, but you lost concentration on the task at hand. That's why I was able to catch you so easily in that genjutsu. Overall, you're decent fighters. There is definite room for improvement."

Naruto looked at him. "What's your _point_ , sensei? We're just going back to the Academy, right?"

Kakashi laughed sheepishly, one hand behind his head. "Oh, yeah, maybe should have said that first. Team Seven passes, you're all genin now."

Naruto's jaw dropped, and he looked at Kakashi murderously. "What? Then what was all that crap with the bells for?"

Kakashi's visible eye wrinkled in what might have been a smile under the mask. "The test was whether, even in a situation that seemed to require you to compete against each other, you could still work together. Naruto, Sasuke, you did well with that—you managed to surprise me with that fireball, Sasuke. Sakura, you warned your teammate about a threat to him, even though it might have led to him getting a bell instead of you." His face and affect became deadly serious. "Sometimes the rules, or the mission, seem to conflict with your teammates. Your comrades. This is the question: what do you do when you are forced to fight your comrades, or abandon them? And this is the answer: those who abandon the mission, or break the rules, are considered to be worthless. Trash. But those who abandon or betray their comrades are worse than trash. That is the lesson of this test."

Naruto looked pensive for a moment, then nodded. Then, as the words sank in, a broad grin grew on his face. "Hey, we graduated! Yes!"

Sasuke acknowledged the news with only a subtle grin, but it was a visible show of emotion that was not annoyance, which might as well have been a record. Sakura, of course, was looking at Sasuke, but she seemed happy as well.

Kakashi made the eye-gesture that might have indicated a grin under his mask. "Team Seven will begin missions tomorrow. See you then."

As Naruto walked proudly back to the village, he almost managed to ignore the fact that there were still black lines on everything he saw.


	4. Cats

Naruto burst into the mission room at the Hokage Tower, pushing close behind Kakashi. The old man sat there, in the middle of the table, Iruka-sensei beside him, both flanked by a few people Naruto didn't know. Sasuke-teme and Sakura followed behind him, with somewhat more dignity, but both were still visibly excited about their first mission.

They lined up in a rank facing the table, Kakashi at one end. "Hokage-sama, Team Seven ready for duty."

The Hokage smiled slightly and picked up a sheet of paper from the tabletop in front of him. It was all Naruto could do to avoid loudly proclaiming his enthusiasm and anticipation. In pursuit of some remnant of dignity, he confined his excited ranting to his own thoughts. _Oh boy oh boy oh boy! What do we get to do today? Will we get to fight someone? Wow!_

He almost missed the Hokage's reading off the sheet. "Available missions for Team Seven. Moving of heavy objects in warehouses of Tsukuda Kouta. General services, including garden chores, babysitting, and grocery shopping, provided to the Shizuka family. Retrieval of the cat 'Tora' belonging to the wife of the Fire Daimyo. Is there a preference?"

Naruto's face fell, and his fidgety demeanor shifted instantly to a crestfallen one. He opened his mouth to protest, but Sasuke, standing beside him, poked him in the ribs and preempted it. Sasuke's expression had also shifted, though less dramatically, from the almost-grin he had previously worn to his usual annoyed flat affect. Kakashi, the Hokage, Iruka, and the only other person at the mission table wearing a hitai-ite were all watching the three genin with identical expressions of dark amusement.

Kakashi selected one of the mission slips from the table. "The cat, I believe. That should prove a challenge."

The three dismayed genin turned and followed him out of the room.

* * *

Team Seven walked back into the mission room, Naruto carrying a disgruntled and beribboned cat. All three of the genin had scratch marks on their arms and faces; Kakashi, of course, was untouched.

"Team Seven, reporting mission complete," said Kakashi, stowing the little orange book behind his back.

A woman who could only be described as _precisely the sort of person_ who would attach ribbons to a perfectly healthy cat, then repeatedly hire ninjas to recover it when it ran away, was standing by the mission table. She rushed forward and grabbed the cat from Naruto.

"Oh, my sweet little Tora! Mommy was so worried about you! How could you worry Mommy so?" she said in an indescribably annoying, squeaky voice, hugging the cat tightly against her chest. The cat made a resigned meowling noise, fighting weakly for room to breathe. The genin, as if by previous accord, looked pointedly away.

After several more such pointless eruptions, the woman paid the clerk who sat next to the Hokage at the table and walked out with her cruelly imprisoned cat. The genin looked at Kakashi, who rubbed the back of his head and grinned.

"Uh, it's up to the jounin-sensei what we do in terms of missions...so, do any of you want to do another mission today?"

The three genin were unanimous in their immediate negative responses.

"All right, then. You're off on your own recognizance today. Meet again here tomorrow for missions." He disappeared in a cloud of smoke, apparently taking 'on your own recognizance' seriously. Sasuke stared at the place where he had been for a moment, then shrugged and walked out. Naruto and Sakura followed.

Sakura peeled off to destinations of her own once they left the building. Naruto was about to do the same, but Sasuke beckoned him along with him. Naruto, not actually having anything else to do, followed.

Sasuke was silent until they reached one of the training grounds, one nearer in than the large one where they had had their bell test, but still only little frequented. Then he turned to face Naruto.

Both of them began speaking at once, then broke off; Naruto gestured for Sasuke to speak first.

"When you told Kakashi about how last time you fought all out you didn't like what happened, what were you talking about?"

Naruto sighed, glancing around. "Wow, it couldn't be a nice simple question..." he said. Then looked up at the sky. "I'm not sure how much of it I can actually tell you, some of it might be village secrets. Leaving out anything specific, I was attacked by a traitor to the village. He had reason to believe from his previous experience that I was a worthless fighter. He came at me with intent to kill; I did the shadow clone jutsu and hit him with about a hundred exploding tags. Same as I did against Kakashi, except this guy didn't kawarimi out of it, he just got...really, really badly mangled. It was kind of ugly."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "A traitor? What was he ranked?"

"Chuunin rank. He underestimated me. I probably couldn't have gotten him that badly if he'd been cautious from the start. I got lucky."

Sasuke nodded.

Naruto waited a moment before asking his own question. "So, when you said when you introduced yourself—that you were going to kill a certain person. And it was in connection with your clan. Did you mean who I thought you meant?"

Sasuke's face went bleak. "I meant my older brother, yes. I see you've heard of him?"

Naruto nodded in return. "Yeah. He's...." He paused for a long second. "That's some ambition you've got there, teme."

"It is." Sasuke's voice was flat, and he regarded the ground for a time. Then he looked up, his face losing the bleakness it had attained.

"I'd like to fight you."

Naruto nodded. "If you want. You wanna set rules?"

Sasuke grinned. "I thought at first we'd leave ninjutsu out of it. So no, um, pulling armies out of your back pocket, and I won't be shooting any fireballs at you."

Naruto assumed a ready stance. "You're probably going to win this one, then. You were always better than me at taijutsu."

Sasuke dropped into his own stance. "Let's see."

* * *

Naruto walked back along the path from the training ground, exhilarated. Sasuke was _good!_ Their early taijutsu matches had gone all his way, and while if he was allowed clones he could usually pull him down by force of numbers, it wasn't really a fair match; neither of them could use their potentially-deadly techniques, fireballs or explosive tags.

The training ground Sasuke had chosen was quite a ways out from the village. Sasuke had gone off after their match to do something insufficiently specified, but whatever it was took him away from the village proper. That left Naruto walking back along the line of training fields on his own, the sun setting behind him, bathing the scene in a ruddy light and casting long shadows ahead of everything he saw.

He saw a figure on the road ahead of him, moving more slowly than he, and as he approached he saw that it was familiar. He broke into a run.

"Hey, Hinata-chan!" he said, coming up beside her and slowing down to her pace.

She looked at him and smiled, blushing slightly, though it was difficult to see with her face in shadow. "Hello, Naruto-kun."

"So, Hinata-chan, are you doing missions now? What's your team like? Who's your sensei?" The questions came quickly, Naruto almost cutting himself off in his haste.

She almost giggled at his distractible enthusiasm. "We started missions yesterday. My team seems pleasant enough. Our sensei is someone named Kurenai. She's a genjutsu specialist."

Naruto grinned. "Cool! Hey, Hinata-chan, I was wondering if you'd like to get together tomorrow or something and work out a bit? Because I need to get faster at taijutsu, and you're the fastest person I've ever fought, and..." He paused, for some reason reluctant to finish: _because it's fun to spend time with you._ Instead, he just cut himself off. "So yeah!"

Hinata ducked her head and blushed brighter. "I-I guess I could do that..."

Naruto grinned. "Thanks! How are your missions going?"

Hinata smiled. "Well enough, I suppose...it's just little jobs, like moving things around or doing chores for people. Not difficult..."

Naruto made a mock pout. "Yeah, we had to catch this cat...who's kind of nasty, and we have to avoid hurting it at all, so it just scratched the heck out of us." He glanced down at his arm, where there had been a moderately nasty claw wound, but it was gone. "Huh. Anyway, we did this teamwork exercise with Kakashi yesterday, so didn't do a mission then. And I just fought Sasuke. He's, like, really good, even better than I thought seeing him in the Academy. He kind of beat me up." A look of concern crossed Hinata's face, and she opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it. Naruto did not notice. "That's...one reason why I wanted to spar with you, because you're the only person I've ever seen who's faster than he is." Naruto grinned at her.

Hinata ducked down, hunching her shoulders. "I...I h-hope I can help you, N-Naruto-kun...." she said. Naruto looked at her, hearing her sudden hesitation.

"Oh, it'll help a lot, Hinata-chan! I could never hit you in the Academy, so I figure if I get fast enough to actually land a punch on you I'll be able to beat Sasuke-teme easy."

Hinata gave him a tremulous smile. "I hope so..."

He grinned. "It'll be great!" He looked up, noticing the sudden change in the light; the sun had set. "Oh, drat...I've got to go, Hinata-chan. I wanted to meet someone, and they might leave soon. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

Hinata nodded. "Goodbye, Naruto-kun..."

Naruto grinned and ran ahead.

* * *

The Hokage was filling out another sheet in the reams of paperwork that the office of Hokage required when the door opened. He looked up and saw Naruto walking into the room. Putting down his pencil, he smiled as the boy sat down. "Hello, Naruto. What is it?"

Naruto grinned at him. "Ne, Ojiisan, I was wondering something. Could you teach me that darkness trick that you used on me when I was going crazy about the lines?"

The Hokage raised an eyebrow. "I could. Is there a reason you want to learn it?"

"Well..." Naruto paused. "I was using the shadow clones a lot when Kakashi tested us yesterday, used up a bunch of chakra, and started seeing the lines again. And this time I used up more, so I didn't stop seeing them before stuff started falling apart on me." He shivered, but continued. "If that's going to happen every time I use a lot of chakra...I can try to start dealing with the side effects on their own, but I'd like to be able to turn off my eyes if I need to."

The Hokage nodded. "Very well, then. I can teach you that. You should be able to learn it pretty quickly; I'll find a time when I can teach you, perhaps later this week."

Naruto grinned brightly. "Thanks, ojiisan!"

The Hokage smiled back at him. "It's no problem, Naruto. Oh, and there's another thing I was going to tell you, which I might as well tell you now. Now that you're a genin, I'm giving you authorization to look at the level three sealing manuals."

Naruto, already grinning, grinned wider, so much that the Hokage might have been afraid his head would split open. "Hey! Cool! I've been wanting those! Thanks a lot, ojiisan!"

The Hokage held up one finger. "Ah, but one condition. The level three books have some instructions for, among other things, trap seals that can activate automatically when they sense a chakra signature nearby. You've caused enough havoc by jury-rigging hand-triggered seals. Before I let you look at the level three books, I want your promise that you won't use seals for any more pranks. That includes clever little traps for your sensei. All right?"

Naruto pouted. "Ojiisaaaan...that makes it no fun!"

The Hokage suppressed a smile. "Fun or no fun, that's the condition. There are laws against attacking people, Naruto, and using fuinjutsu in a trap looks a whole lot more like an attack than a harmless prank. I know you don't mean it that way, but it's something that the council can say, and they don't like you already. Which means that I have to deal with a bunch of idiots loudly clamoring for your head. So no more seal traps. Got it?"

Naruto hung his head. "Got it. Thanks for the level three authorization, anyway, ojiisan."

The Hokage nodded. "You're welcome. And your promise?"

Naruto rolled his eyes. "I promise not to use fuinjutsu in any pranks or traps laid for people who are not enemies to Konoha. All right?"

"Perfectly. Thank you, Naruto." The Hokage smiled at him.

Naruto grinned himself and walked out of the office.

* * *

Naruto found Hinata at one of the training grounds the next day, right after their mandatory D-rank grunt work. He came up behind her and greeted her rather loudly, eliciting a jump and a squeak.

"Oh! Hello, Naruto-kun! I d-didn't see you, I'm sorry..."

"It's no problem, Hinata-chan. I was, uh, kind of trying to surprise you."

"I...I shouldn't have been surprised..." she mumbled as they walked over to the sparring ground. Naruto did not seem to hear her. Instead, they took up positions across from each other on one set of starting lines, and both bowed. Naruto took what seemed to be the usual Academy position, while Hinata, for the first time in sparring with him, stood in the Juuken stance, activating her eyes as she did so. Naruto looked at her quizzically for a moment.

"Hinata-chan, what's that stance? I've never seen it before."

She blushed, but did not break her stance to look away. "This is the Jyuuken stance...it's for the Hyuuga taijutsu style...it's against the rules for me to use it in the Academy, so people won't know too much about it, but I can use it now."

Naruto grinned. "Hey, cool, Jyuuken! Let's see!" Without further discussion, he launched into one of the standard Academy attack flows, aiming a straight punch at her face while prepared to follow up quickly after a block. Hinata, from her lower stance, brought one hand around in what looked like an oddly reversed standard block. However, her palm hitting his wrist, she pushed a small spike of chakra into it as she slapped it aside. Naruto quickly took a step back, shaking his hand.

"Wow! That's neat! I guess," he said, moving his hand around and individually flexing his fingers, "that that's a weak version of the chakra," he waved his hands around vaguely, "thing? Cause I read in the Archive that Jyuuken strikes should more or less paralyze what they hit, and that was only a little bit worse than hitting my elbow wrong."

Hinata nodded, returning to her ready stance. "Yes...if I push too much chakra, it can do permanent damage...so when we spar it's just minor strikes. I-is that...a problem?"

"No! No problem! I _like_ having the use of my limbs." Naruto shot her a grin. Then he attacked again, this time feinting into a kick. She blocked, spiking his calf this time. He pulled back, massaging his leg, then advanced again. This time, instead of feinting, or drawing back from the painful spikes, he swung twice, then simply jumped at her, leading with one shoulder. She was bowled off her feet, and they both ended up on the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Naruto began to laugh. He took a moment to disentangle himself, then rolled off of her, pushing himself up—a little harder with the blows he had taken to the arms in setting up his tackle. "Well, that's one way to get through that defense of yours."

Hinata had been blushing vigorously throughout, but here she giggled slightly and met his eyes. "Ano...it would not be good to do that in a fight...if someone was trying to kill you they could have hit you in the back there...."

Naruto grinned. "Figures. Ah, well, I'll figure something out."

They sparred for some hours. By the end of it, Hinata was tired and pouring sweat. Naruto breathed heavily for a few moments after each exchange—longer if she happened to have hit his lungs that time—but recovered quickly; when they finished, he was red-faced but seemed no less energetic than when they began.

She stood back from the line, seeing the sun set. "Ano...I have to go, I'm sorry..." she said, looking down.

He grinned. "No problem! You're really good, you know! That Jyuuken is great! You could beat Sasuke-teme easy!"

She smiled at him as she left, but she did not say what she was thinking: that with the Jyuuken, what he had described was no real achievement, and for a Hyuuga, she was weak.

* * *

So it went. Team Seven routinely did D-rank missions in the morning; some were boring and routine, such as, apparently every other day, finding the Fire Daimyo's wife's cat. Others were more interesting. One day, they were called to clear a field of the tall, scrubby weeds that had grown on it. Sasuke had immediately sought permission from Kakashi to use fireballs on it, and on gaining it had taken great pleasure in scouring the entire area clean. That was one of their quicker missions.

Several days after the Hokage had taught him the Kokuangyo no Jutsu, the darkness genjutsu that Naruto could use to turn off his eyes if he needed to, he sat in a training area, ready to try something.

First, he created a mob of shadow clones. This time, instead of using them in concert to attack another, he simply had them all fight to the, well, dispersion, joining in fully himself. After some minutes of bright orange cacophony, the field was empty again, and Naruto was panting and bruised. Then, allowing himself no more than thirty seconds rest time, he did it again. Then again.

It took five iterations of this before he was feeling as exhausted as he had after Kakashi's bell test, and that surprised him. _I only made three mobs of that size when I fought Kakashi, and I was just about falling down. Am I getting stronger?_ Thin lines had manifested faintly on the surfaces of things after the fourth try, but after the fifth they were again dark and omnipresent, ominous in their potential. Naruto shivered slightly on seeing them, but suppressed the reaction and sat under a tree. He closed his eyes and shouted in his mind. _Hey! Idiot fox! You want to tell me some things?_

And a voice sounded in his mind, greater than his own, darkly amused. **Your wish is my command, whelp.** And he felt his consciousness slipping away, and he fell over and slept.

* * *

He woke in a dimly lit hallway, water on the ground. He was lying face down, but the water was only a fraction of an inch deep; it did not reach his mouth or nose, merely making him rather wet. As he stood, he looked around. A hole in the ceiling emitted oddly yellow light. There were cross-passages every few feet, and the ceiling was covered in pipes whose purpose was not clear.

A loud rumbling noise came from one direction, and a breath of air washed over him, smelling...not quite foul, but fetid and odd. _Where the hell am I? I was just trying to speak to the fox, and I wind up here?_ He looked around again. He had no idea where he was or where he should go, but the direction of that odd wind seemed as good as any—that at least implied that there was _something_ at the end.

He set off, down the main hallway, three passages down, and then turned. This side passage went on straight for only some tens of feet, then ended. It left him in a huge, high-ceilinged room whose floor was still covered in water. A huge gate, stretching across most of one wall and all the way from the floor to the ceiling, stood before him. Its two sides were, oddly enough, joined only by a piece of paper with the word 'seal' written on it—as it would be used for certain types of prison seal that were only discussed in the abstract in any sources he had read.

He approached the gate, it being the most interesting thing he had seen here so far. As he walked toward it, he felt another rush of air over him—stronger, this time, and stronger smelling. It accompanied a repetition of the earlier rumbling—but, this time, he could hear it better, and identified it as something very large, breathing.

He froze, only then putting the pieces together, just as a huge pair of eyes appeared behind the gate over a wide, toothy grin. As he watched, the whole of it became shrouded in red fire, which burned heatlessly as it spoke.

**"Hello, whelp. You wanted to see me?"** The words were laced with poisonous laughter.

Naruto looked at it, frozen, and tried desperately to collect himself. "You're the fox."

There was a sound of laughter, this time, but its humor was dark. **"Astute of you to have noticed."**

Naruto drew himself up, his annoyance warring with his fear. "Hey! I have some questions for you!"

**"Ask and you shall receive, WHELP."**

Naruto stuttered, suddenly off balance, then spoke again. "What's with all these lines?"

**"Have I not already given you this answer? The lines are DEATH. If you cut a thing along its lines, it will be cut. If you stab a thing in its points, it will be destroyed."**

"All right, but why am I seeing them?"

**"You see with my eyes, WHELP. As I am trapped here, my power affects you."**

Naruto frowned. "All right...wait, points? What are those?"

The fox laughed again. **"You do not see them? Simply wait, WHELP."**

Naruto shook his head, confused, then tried again. "Why does it drive me crazy after a while?"

**"You think a human can see with a demon's eyes and suffer no ill effects? Be glad that you can use it for the little time you can, WHELP!"** This time there was a long, dark laugh, sounding more truly amused at this than at anything before.

The fox's laugh was frightening. Naruto stood up straight and attempted to shrug the effect off, but his voice was less brash. "That's great, now where am I and how do I get out?"

The fox laughed again. **"Oh, I will send you away, WHELP. But hear this. You will require POWER or else you will DIE. My presence within you thrusts you onto a GREATER STAGE. Merely always know, that without me you would be HELPLESS!"**

And again consciousness slipped away, and again he slept.

* * *

Sakura debated with herself whether to proceed. She had decided to approach Kakashi after their mission that day, but now she was less sure of herself. For one thing, he had simply gone to an empty training ground after their mission and sat, reading a book with a bright orange cover. While this was convenient for her, it was most certainly not part of his daily routine. Had he anticipated her request that day? If so, it was...accommodating of him to act so obligingly, but a little bit creepy that he could read her so well.

She eventually realized that to avoid it would be futile; he had to be aware of her presence, simply standing lamely in the street near the training ground. If she left, he would simply know that she didn't have the courage to approach him, and how pathetic was that?

_Sasuke-kun. Need to get stronger. Just think about that._ With that, she stepped onto the training ground and walked toward him. He looked up at her when she approached and stowed the book behind his back.

(How was he storing all that? Whenever he got anything out, he just pulled it from behind him, as if someone was obligingly hiding in his kunai pouch and handing him things. Weird.)

"Kakashi-sensei?"

"Yes, Sakura?"

"Uh...sensei, I was wondering...what can you show me to make me stronger?"

"Well, that depends. What are you good at? If I recall correctly your scores...weak taijutsu, moderate chakra capacity, good chakra control. Is that right?"

She nodded hesitantly.

"Well, if you're good at chakra control, the things that immediately present themselves are genjutsu and medical training. Medic training usually waits until you're a chuunin, but genjutsu...I can show you some genjutsu. Also, if you increase your capacity some, you can do some interesting things with standard jutsu. That'll just be training."

She nodded again, somewhat more confidently. "Genjutsu, then?"

He stood up. "Let's begin."

* * *

Naruto stood across from Sasuke at the training ground, a now-familiar position. His afternoons after missions were basically evenly split between sparring with Sasuke and sparring with Hinata; the latter had made him significantly faster, requiring that he fully dodge blows due to the impossibility of conventionally blocking a jyuuken strike, while the former had, well, increased his tolerance for sarcasm.

This was the third fight of the day. The first two had been plain taijutsu, and as usual, Sasuke had won both, though that was getting to take longer and longer. Now, Naruto grinned, because he was able now to use shadow clones.

He formed a crossed hand seal and focused his chakra, this time eschewing the voiced repetition of the technique. A dozen clones formed around him, including him in the mob. They all charged in unison with a yell.

Sasuke held his ground. He was used to this, by now. The first clone reached him, and he dispelled it with a single punch. The second, likewise, though this one got in a blow to his shoulder first. The third one was Naruto himself. He took a punch to the face, which _hurt_ , and Sasuke turned away, thinking he was a clone who would dispel. This proved a mistake. Naruto jumped on him from behind, grabbing him in a full nelson like he had Kakashi during the bell test. Sasuke, unfortunately, was not so adept with his kawarimi as Kakashi was, and Naruto's grip prevented him from using hand seals. Sasuke took three blows to the face before he could dispel the attacking clone with a kick. Then he jumped up and backwards, landing hard on his back—or rather, on Naruto. Naruto yelped, his grip broken, and Sasuke scrambled up to deal with the rest of the clones. They were charging as Sasuke finished his hand seals; they were all but one caught in his fireball, a weakened version that would dispel clones but not severely injure Naruto himself.

The remaining clone, who had been a few steps behind the others, charged through the smoke of their demise and jumped at Sasuke, yelling. Sasuke, who had paused for a moment to breathe after the chakra-intensive fireball technique, caught the first kick and threw an uncharacteristically sloppy counterpunch. The clone ducked under it and slammed a fist into the Uchiha's stomach.

Sasuke folded around the blow, but retained the presence of mind to slam a vicious headbutt into the clone's own head, dispelling it. He straightened up slowly, one arm across his solar plexus, and saw Naruto, now standing, jump up. He looked up, tracking Naruto's motion, and caught the first downward kick on his other, upraised arm. Naruto, moving as if in slow motion, pulled his legs up as the support of Sasuke's arm failed, and, as he fell, brought one knee up into the other genin's face.

He pulled the blow at the last moment, but there was still a startling crack. Naruto landed and jumped backwards, but Sasuke held up one hand in token of surrender as he pressed the other to his nose. As he removed it, Naruto saw his nose bent to one side, a trickle of blood running down.

He winced. "That looks nasty. You all right, teme?"

Sasuke nodded, not speaking. He took one deep breath (through his mouth, Naruto saw) and moved his nose slowly back straight. To his credit, he remained silent throughout, though he clenched his teeth.

He took a moment before speaking again, his voice oddly nasal. "Nicely done, dobe."

Naruto grinned. "You gonna have that looked at?"

Sasuke nodded. "I guess so. Can't really fight like this, anyway."

They walked off the field side by side, Naruto feeling a little bit smug about duplicating on the perpetually arrogant Uchiha the same sorts of wounds that he had taken in their taijutsu-only matches.

* * *

Team Seven was, for a change of pace, looking for the Fire Daimyo's wife's cat. Again. Naruto had started using large numbers of clones to search for the dratted beast, but a clone couldn't reliably catch the thing—it was vicious enough in its scratching that it could dispel a clone, and the attempt at capture would only stir it up. It was more useful to have them all search, then any that saw it dispel to send the information back to him.

(Naruto still couldn't believe that he hadn't noticed that he received his shadow clones' memories until it was pointed out to him by the Uchiha. Even when he was beating him in a fight, Sasuke still managed to make him feel stupid.)

He received a burst of memory, and sorted through it. There was the cat, and the clone had been...there. Closer than usual to the tower; perhaps the cat wanted to sample the leavings from village market stalls, rather than the available small wildlife in the wooded areas. He signaled his team, and they moved quickly in the direction of the cat.

"This is simply riveting," said Sasuke, his nose only now free of the tape it had born for the past week, as they closed in on the feline. Naruto nodded in annoyed agreement. After a quick interlude involving some loud hissing, painful scratches and a face full of fur, the two continued their conversation on the way back to the tower with a cat now wrapped in a sack. "I wonder if the C-rank missions are less pointless?"

Naruto sighed. "I figure we can at least ask for one. It's been, what, a month? Thirty of these things is more than enough for me."

Sasuke looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Tomorrow, then?"

Naruto nodded as Sakura caught up to them. "Tomorrow."


	5. Demons

Team Seven walked into the mission room, a scene that had already become very familiar. The Hokage sat at the table alongside Iruka, just as they had every day. It might have been the first day they had done it, or their fifth, or any of the other days; nothing about this room ever changed.

Naruto and Sasuke had spoken to Kakashi about receiving a C-rank mission; his reply had been entirely noncommittal and unhelpful, which was pretty much standard for Kakashi. Naruto was sufficiently annoyed that he was ready to take it to the next level.

The Hokage was reading off the available D-rank missions again. He finished the listing of tasks, and Kakashi was ready to select one, when Naruto spoke.

"Hey, ojiisan! Those missions are all boring. Can we get a C-rank instead?"

(Naruto had, in fact, heard of the concepts of _dignity_ and _proper respect_. Indeed, he respected the Hokage probably most of all the people he knew. No one had managed to explain to him that such respect was usually expressed through formal means of address.)

Amusement and annoyance warred in the Hokage's mind over the rights to his facial expression, and he ruthlessly suppressed both. "A request is logged from Uzumaki Naruto to assign Team Seven a C-rank mission. Is this the desire of Team Seven?"

Sasuke spoke first. "It is my desire." Sakura nodded a moment afterwards, following Sasuke's lead.

"Does the leader of Team Seven object?" The Hokage looked at Kakashi, who was standing in proper formation, but with a particular unfocused look in his visible eye. Kakashi started, then rubbed the back of his head almost sheepishly.

"Well, if they want one I don't have a problem." Kakashi looked at the genin, who looked back at him with expressions of eagerness (Naruto), slightly less apathy than usual (Sasuke), and mild nervousness (Sakura). He nodded. "Yeah, I guess that's fine."

The Hokage nodded. "Very well. C-rank mission assigned to Team Seven." He selected a different stack of papers from the table in front of him. "The mission is..." he pulled a slip from the stack and read from it, "to escort a civilian client to the Land of Waves, then remain there until the completion of a project, while protecting him and his associates from whatever dangers appear. Client is a bridge builder working on a bridge connecting the Land of Waves to the Land of Fire. Mission expected to last up to three months. Anticipated hazards include risk of banditry and wild animal attacks." He turned to the side, where a door was set in the wall with a chuunin guarding it. "Please bring in the client."

The chuunin nodded sharply and walked through the sliding door. A moment later, he returned, followed by an old man. He wore an oddly shaped straw hat, and he held a bottle in one hand; the flush on his face implied that the contents of the bottle were rather strongly alcoholic.

"Tazuna-san, your mission has been assigned to Team Seven," said the Hokage, indicating them. The old man looked at them owlishly, his face red.

"Heeeeey, these'r just a buncha kids! How can they be ninjas?" he said with a scowl.

Naruto crossed his arms and looked at Tazuna with a glower; Sasuke's almost- smile slid off his face.

"Especially _that_ one." Tazuna pointed. His hand was too unsteady to tell who he was pointing at, but his next words left no doubt. "The short one with the stupid coat. You're too _short_ to be a ninja!" He obviously found this hilarious.

Naruto yelped in indignation and moved as if to charge at Tazuna. He was caught short by two hands; Kakashi grabbed the back of his coat, and Sasuke caught his wrist. Sasuke spoke out of the side of his mouth. "Dobe, if you kill the client we can't get paid for protecting him."

Naruto grumped and stepped back; Kakashi and Sasuke released him. Kakashi stepped forwards.

"Tazuna-san, I assure you that we are indeed ninjas. My team are genin, and they are certainly trained more than well enough to defeat any sort of bandits or animals that we might encounter. I am a jounin, and I am competent to handle any realistic threat."

Tazuna took another pull at his bottle and hmphed. "I guess I get what I pay for. All right, when do we leave?"

Kakashi glanced at his team. "Does anyone anticipate preparation taking longer than a few hours?"

All three genin shook their heads.

"Then we can leave this afternoon. Tazuna-san, please meet us at the east gate at three o'clock. Our mission begins then." He turned to look at the three genin. "Dismissed."

* * *

Hinata was working on repairing a roof when she saw Naruto at a distance. She looked at him with a smile, seeing him grin in response, then—burst into a cloud of smoke and disappear. _What?_ She looked around, concerned. Her teammates, working beside her, looked up.

"Hinata-san, is something wrong?" inquired Shino.

"No! Uh, n-no...I just saw something...odd," she said, and began to work again.

Some five minutes later, she was taking a break. She had just stepped down off the ladder onto the ground when Naruto, again, came up to her.

"Hey, Hinata-chan!"

She smiled, still a little perturbed. "Hello, Naruto-kun. Ano...just a few minutes ago, were you on that roof over there?" She indicated the roof of the building on which Naruto had been.

"Oh, yeah! Yeah, that was a clone. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you—our team got a C-rank mission! Hokage-ojiisan said that it might take like three months or something! So I'll probably be gone for a while, and I just wanted to say goodbye!"

She nodded to him, smiling. "Congratulations, Naruto-kun. I...I hope it goes well."

He grinned. "Thanks! Well, I'll see you around, I guess!"

"Goodbye, Naruto-kun..."

He waved and ran off. Hinata smiled after him, wondering. He would be gone, maybe for a long time—and what was that about a clone? Clones didn't do that.

* * *

Naruto arrived at the meeting place perhaps five minutes late. Sasuke and Sakura were already standing at the edge of the square fronting the east gateway. More surprisingly, so was Kakashi.

Naruto walked up to them and burst out at Kakashi, "Hey! Since when are you ever on time? Why is the one time you're on time the day I'm _late_? What's with that?"

Kakashi smiled under his mask, his eye reflecting the expression. "Why, Naruto, I don't know what you're talking about. When have you ever known me to be less than perfectly punctual?" He looked down the road. "Hey, there's Tazuna-san!" He walked towards the bridge builder, leaving Naruto fuming in his wake.

Sasuke glanced at Naruto askance. "Hey, dobe, you packed for three months there?" Sure enough, both Sasuke and Sakura were wearing large, heavy-looking travel packs, while Naruto wore only his usual training attire and weapon holsters, plus an extra, odd-looking pouch on each hip.

Naruto glanced down. "Oh. Yeah, I am. Storage seals." He grinned beatifically. "It makes things so much lighter, it's nice and convenient." This with a smug look at Sasuke's overlarge pack.

Sasuke snorted. "Fuin-dobe."

Kakashi walked up alongside Tazuna, cutting the conversation short. "All right, kids, let's go," he said, louder than usual. The genin glanced at each other, confused at the unaccustomed diminutive, until Sasuke raised one eyebrow and subtly indicated Tazuna, who was looking chagrined. A sense of understanding permeated Team Seven. _Ah, he's messing with the client._

They filed one by one out the small inset door in the large gate, Kakashi first, followed by Tazuna and the genin. Kakashi stopped at the booth in which sat the guarding chuunin.

"Team Seven, departing for C-ranked mission assigned by the Hokage," he said, handing a scroll to the guard.

The chuunin looked bored, stamping it and handing it back. "Team Seven, mission confirmed," he said. Kakashi continued on, and Tazuna and the three genin followed.

* * *

They camped that night near a quick-flowing stream, about half a mile off the road. Kakashi had chosen the spot for its access to water, despite Naruto's noting that he was carrying at least a week's water in one of his several storage scrolls. That conversation had been rather amusing.

"Naruto, this is a useful thing to know: how to support yourself on what you can carry, without using storage seals. Most ninja are not going to be carrying fifty thousand ryo worth of storage scrolls on every mission they go on."

" _Fifty thousand ryo?!?!_ "

"Yes, Naruto. Storage scrolls are expensive. I'm assuming you made these?"

"Yeah, but I didn't know...."

"Not surprising. We will be selecting our campsites according to the usual needs of ninja who do not carry small fortunes in fuinjutsu on their persons."

If Naruto had had any further objections, he had not expressed them, probably still trying to come to terms with the real value of his work.

Team Seven, along with Tazuna, sat around a small fire (made by Sakura under Kakashi's careful eye to release as little smoke as possible) eating field rations. The sun was just setting behind the trees to the west, as the genin wore identical distasteful expressions at the offensively bland rations. Naruto finished first and stood up.

"I'm going to go walk around a little."

Kakashi looked up. "Standard rule, stay within fifty feet of camp if you don't have good reason to leave that radius."

Naruto looked slightly crestfallen, but nodded before he walked away. He turned around on reaching the fifty-foot mark, and walked back across the allowed circle, turning slightly to avoid cutting through the camp. On reaching the fifty-foot boundary again, he turned and paced in circles around it, restless. Meanwhile, the rest of the ninja were finishing their food.

Naruto walked back up to the camp just as Sasuke was finishing. He looked up amusedly.

"Do you think you got enough exercise in your walk?"

Naruto grumped and sat down again. Soon darkness fell, and Tazuna retired to an extra tent. Kakashi stood up, stretching.

"All right, my shiny genin, here's your next lesson: how to establish a watch schedule in potentially hostile territory! Of course, since it wouldn't be a lesson otherwise, I regretfully cannot help you, and as such am going to sleep now. Good night!" He disappeared as well into his tent. The three genin looked at each other until Naruto spoke.

"That was a lesson?"

* * *

Team Seven woke with the sun, except for Sasuke, who had taken the dawn watch. They ate a quick breakfast, consisting of more ration bars, while Tazuna slept. After the team was ready, Kakashi woke Tazuna and they tore down the tents. Kakashi admonished them to leave no trace of their presence behind, lest enemies determine their location; in pursuit of same, the genin combed the campsite for almost half an hour, policing the tiniest signs of their camp. Kakashi, of course, did nothing throughout. They began walking again with Kakashi cheerful and the genin more and more annoyed.

"Kakashi-sensei, is you having a team an opportunity for you to teach us or for you to get us to do all your work?" Naruto grumbled as they left the campsite behind.

Kakashi made the expression they had learned to recognize was a grin under the mask. "But Naruto, if I did it all for you you wouldn't learn anything. I'm just trying to make you the best shinobi you can be."

Naruto and Sasuke both rolled their eyes at this, and Sakura made an annoyed snort.

* * *

The travelers were walking along a wide dirt track between occasional, sparse clumps of trees, first Naruto and Sasuke, then Tazuna and Sakura, and finally Kakashi in the rear. They walked mostly in silence, the shinobi watching the surroundings, Tazuna simply walking.

The genin in the lead passed the puddle without notice or comment. Sakura, who was watching Tazuna, did so as well. Kakashi, playing rearguard, raised one eyebrow as he passed, then simply continued walking.

Naruto first became aware of the enemies at a loud splashing noise and a sound almost like the chains that controlled the large gates at Konoha on their pulleys. He spun quickly around, Sasuke following suit, to see two apparitions in gas masks and wearing odd armored claws on their wrists. As he watched, a chain of odd links connected their clawed gauntlets, and it flew through the air to wrap several times around Kakashi. With a mutual yank, the two odd ninjas tightened the chain, and it ripped through Kakashi's body; dismembered pieces fell to the ground.

"First one," said one of the two ninjas flatly.

They charged, straight past Sakura and Tazuna towards Naruto and Sasuke. The chain leapt into the air again, seeming to have a life of its own, seeking to wrap around the two genin at the same time. Naruto and Sasuke jumped in opposite directions. While still in the air, Sasuke threw a kunai at the chain, hitting it precisely and binding it to the tree trunk behind. Not for the first time, Naruto envied Sasuke's ability with the throwing weapons. Not so confident in himself, he landed before pulling two explosive kunai from the pouch behind him. The armored ninjas—who, Naruto noticed, were wearing headbands, though he could not identify the symbol at the moment—had just turned and noticed the binding of their chain when the kunai landed at their feet, tags wrapped around the handles and glowing ominously. They both ran, but the necessity of moving quickly prevented them from disengaging the chain from their gauntlets; both enemies were still bound to the tree by their chain when the tags exploded.

As the dust cleared, Sasuke charged through the cloud and attacked one of the two, jumping up to slam into him in a flying kick that left the ninja on his back, Sasuke standing on his shoulders. The genin landed a hard blow on the ninja's face above the mask, but was then forced to jump away and disengage to avoid the counterstroke of the armored claw.

The other attacker had disengaged from his chain while Naruto watched Sasuke. He stood up from where he had fallen in his rush to escape the exploding tag, and turned slowly to look at Naruto with a menacing expression. The attempt at intimidation failed; Naruto formed a cross handseal and muttered under his breath, and ten more of him popped into existence on either side. The clones charged, Naruto among them. The enemy's eyes widened, and he raised his clawed gauntlet in gesture of defiance, then fell over suddenly, unconscious.

Naruto stopped, confused, then saw something he had not expected: Kakashi, standing behind the fallen enemy, having slammed the ring of a kunai into his temple. The jonin nodded at Naruto before moving towards Sasuke and the other enemy; Naruto stared at the place where Kakashi had apparently fallen to the spiked chain, and saw only a sliced-up log. He smacked himself in the forehead in realization and ran towards the others as well; the other enemy was down, by this point, and Kakashi stood next to Sasuke behind him.

Kakashi smiled at Naruto as he ran up. "Ah, good timing, Naruto. Would you happen to have any rope or wire in those scrolls of yours?"

Naruto gaped for a moment before he regained his mental balance. "Uh—yeah, one sec." He pulled a scroll from one of his side holsters, glanced at its label, then put it back and grabbed another. This one, he opened to a certain seal, then triggered with one hand. Two coils of ninja wire appeared atop the scroll; he handed one to Kakashi and sealed the other one back away.

As Naruto stowed his scroll, Kakashi dragged both unconscious ninja to the foot of the tree where their chain was pinned, then tied them up tightly with the wire. Naruto looked up as he finished, to see Kakashi pull a book from the pouch behind him. Unusually enough, this book was not, in fact, bright orange; he opened it up and scanned through it, as if looking for something. Naruto took the time to look more closely at the two enemies; their forehead protectors bore Hidden Mist insignia, but he could not deduce much else from their gear.

Kakashi finished with the book and put it back in his belt pouch, which was apparently bigger on the inside. He glanced down at the two, who were just starting to wake; Kakashi sped the process up by kneeling in front of them and slapping them both vigorously across the face. When both were marginally lucid, he stood up.

"The Demon Brothers, I see. Missing-nin of Kirigakure. What brings you here attacking random travelers?"

A voice sounded in Naruto's head, still impressive and intimidating, but this time annoyed and insulted rather than amused. **Demon? They're no demons. What business have they with the name?** Naruto flinched slightly, but attempted to maintain his concentration on Kakashi.

Sasuke seemed to be thinking along similar lines. "Demon Brothers? The image I associate with 'demon' is hardly a couple of pathetic assassins with a gimmicky weapon."

Kakashi spoke dryly. "Nonetheless, that's their apparent alias. Care to answer my question?" This was directed at the brothers in question, along with a threatening eyebrow.

One of the brothers spoke up. "We got told by," and he looked nervously at his partner, "uh, we got hired to take out the old guy." Tazuna and Sakura had walked over by now. Sakura was looking frightened, but also a little disappointed; she was shooting more glances than usual at Sasuke, who was unaware, his attention on the captives. Tazuna had come up just in time to hear the Mist ninja's admission, and he was looking rather pale.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "You're hiding something." His voice was almost disappointed. "Told by...Told by whom?"

The brother who had spoken looked panicked. "We got hired! We can't tell you...we'd be.... We can't!"

"Whatever would happen to you is going to be the least of your worries." Kakashi shook his head. "Lucky you, we don't have time right now to arrange a proper interrogation. Unlucky you, that means the ANBU get to take you back to Ibiki." He ran a finger along the edge of the brothers' fighting chain, then made seals. "Kuchiyose no jutsu!" He slapped a hand down on the dirt path; there was a cloud of smoke and suddenly there sat a small pug dog.

"Hello, Kakashi. What is it now?"

Naruto looked back and forth between the dog and the jonin. "Uh...sensei? Is the dog talking?"

Kakashi looked at Naruto, rolling his visible eye. "Yes, Naruto. No time for introductions now. Hello, Pakkun."

The dog nodded. "You needed me for something?"

"We're on a mission, and something came up. Message for the Hokage. Two prisoners captured by Team Seven, a day's walk out on the southeast road. Team Seven is inadequately prepared to deal with them. Suggest immediate pickup by ANBU for conveyance to Konoha. Message ends."

Pakkun nodded. "Got it. Anything else?"

Kakashi shook his head. "No, that's it. Thanks, Pakkun."

"No problem." The dog leapt for the trees, jumping between them several times faster than the ninjas had been walking, and was soon gone.

"Now, let's see," said Kakashi. "We have a couple of missing-nin—fairly pathetic missing-nin, it's true, but missing-nin nonetheless—coming after Tazuna here." He looked straight at the old man, who turned even paler and glanced around as if to escape. "You told us that the mission was to guard you from bandits, Tazuna-san. Missing-nin of Kirigakure were not in the picture."

Tazuna gulped. "Ah...well...." He trailed off.

Kakashi nodded. "So you do know something. Very well. Kindly do tell us everything you know about who's after you, Tazuna, or else we will be unable to properly perform our duty." This might have sounded like an innocuous statement of fact in another context; as Kakashi said it, it did not.

* * *

Team Seven stood around Tazuna as he finished his story. Their reactions were mixed; Naruto was pensive and quiet, for a change, while Sakura looked frightened. Sasuke did not appear to have reacted, and Kakashi's expression was invisible.

Kakashi spoke first. "It appears that this Gatou person is hiring shinobi to go after you, then." He stared at the bridge-builder. "That makes this at least a B-rank mission, or higher, depending on who's hired. Not at all the kind of thing that a genin team would be sent on."

Tazuna ducked his head. "I'm sorry! But we couldn't afford any higher-ranked missions, and I need to finish the bridge! Otherwise...."

Kakashi nodded. "Yes, Gatou retains control of the Land of Waves, reduces it to his personal fiefdom. Certainly terrible enough, and I understand your motives. The fact remains that this mission is higher-level than we are really equipped to handle."

Sasuke spoke up, his face impassive. "We should continue."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Care to elaborate, Sasuke?"

"It would ill reflect Konoha that we would end a mission in progress simply due to increased difficulties."

Kakashi inclined his head at Sasuke. _And, if I'm not mistaken, it would ill reflect the Uchiha that a clan member—the last clan member—would end his first mission outside the village. Not that I blame him, I suppose...._ He spoke again. "Any other thoughts?"

Naruto's face cleared, and he spoke with something approaching his usual exuberance. "We should keep going! I mean, it looks like this guy really needs it, and he can't pay for a higher-ranked mission. And...it's just not good, like this Gatou guy, you know? He shouldn't do that."

Kakashi looked at the genin again. Sasuke's expression was his usual half- glower, but it was set in lines that spoke less of anger and more of determination. Naruto was looking stubborn, as usual. Sakura...well, it appeared that Sakura was frightened. _But then, it wouldn't do her any good to turn back on a mission that became too hard...that's not always an option._

He nodded. "Is that your opinion, then?"

Sasuke and Naruto both nodded, and, a second later, so did Sakura. _Hmm. Interesting._ He looked back at Tazuna. "It appears, then, that we're keeping the mission. However, some more precautions are necessary."

He was about to continue when Naruto spoke up. "Um...sensei? I was thinking, like, maybe I could make shadow clones to go ahead of us and see if anyone tries that again?"

Kakashi looked at him, startled. He wouldn't have expected that sort of idea from Naruto, but then....

"That's a good idea, Naruto. In fact, how about I show you how to do proper sentry formation around a moving target?"

Naruto grinned and made a hand sign; the area around them disappeared, first in smoke, then in copies of Naruto. Kakashi sighed.

"Naruto, first, we only need about ten to do sentry work. Second, for stealthy sentry formation in a forest," he indicated the green treetops around them, "you may want to have your clones wear something other than orange."

* * *

The travelers sat in a small boat, simple and well-used. An outboard engine sat at the back of the boat, but it was not running; instead, a nervous boatman sculled with an oar over the stern. Naruto had dismissed his sentry clones when they boarded the boat, leaving him feeling oddly exposed; three days of constantly having sentry clones out had gotten him used to some general knowledge of their surroundings.

Everyone in the boat was quiet. The owner, who Tazuna had gotten to agree to this with a minor bribe and an appeal to patriotism, was obviously frightened; Tazuna was less so, but still nervous. Sasuke was always quiet, Sakura was following his example, and Naruto was sorting through the memories from his many sentry clones. Most of them had simply run through the trees until their shift was up, but still—you saw so much more of the country this way!

The boatman spoke up softly. "Look, up ahead—there's the bridge." Sure enough, an enormous bridge stretched from far away to a point some half a mile ahead, barely visible in the mist. It cut off suddenly, ending without ceremony, as if it had been sliced off in the middle of the ocean.

"Wow," Naruto whispered, trying to keep his voice down. "That's big...Tazuna- san, did you really build that?"

Tazuna smiled. "Well, I designed it. Obviously I didn't build it myself. And I'm still working on it."

Naruto grinned at him. "It's really cool!"

"I'm glad you think so." Tazuna chuckled at the blond boy's enthusiasm.

"Try to keep it down!" said the boatman frantically. "If we get seen...."

Naruto nodded and quieted. The boat slid silently along the line of the bridge, making Naruto feel tiny next to it. After some time, the vessel turned to the side and moved through one of the tunnel-like gaps between the bridge supports. As they left the tunnel, they found themselves in a bay between two spurs of land, both lined with small docks. The boatman slid up alongside one.

"Here you are. This is as far as I go."

Tazuna nodded. "Thanks very much." He stepped creakily out of the boat and stretched. "Now to my house! It's just a little way, uh, that way." He indicated one of the roads leading away from the thin strip of town around the bay. The travelers set off again.

As soon as they had left the town and were once again among the trees, Naruto formed a cross handseal and made another group of clones. These henged themselves out of Naruto's orange jumpsuit into more inconspicuous garb, then jumped away into the trees. Tazuna, who had seen this once an hour for the past three days, did not blink.

They had been walking for perhaps three hours when Naruto blinked, then turned to Kakashi. "Kakashi-sensei? Something just happened to one of my clones. It didn't see anything, just got dispelled without warning."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "You're sure it didn't trip, or something?"

Naruto crossed his arms. "Come on, Kakashi-sensei, I'm not _that_ clumsy."

Kakashi laughed. "True enough." His face became serious. "In that case...someone killed it. And they're probably coming after us now. Naruto, send out some clones to investigate. Everyone, defensive formation."

Naruto nodded and made the cross again. These clones did not bother to disguise themselves, but simply jumped straight away. The four shinobi stood close around Tazuna, still moving, but alert and ready to defend.

This had been the state of affairs for a minute or so when Naruto received a memory dump. "Kakashi-sensei, the clones I sent out didn't find anything. One of them just dispelled themselves to report back. They saw nothing." Then, suddenly, his eyes widened. "Sensei!"

Kakashi was not listening. He had heard something else. "Everyone DOWN!" he roared suddenly, dropping to the ground. The three genin did the same, Sasuke grabbing Tazuna and bringing him down as well.

A huge sword spun out of the forest behind them and whipped less than a foot above their heads, passing over them and slamming into a nearby tree blade- first. It embedded itself in the trunk with nearly half of its width, almost cutting the tree in two. As the travelers stood again, a man wearing no shirt, only a leather strap for a sword, appeared on the sword hilt, standing above them.

Kakashi looked up, taking in the sword, the man, and the headband he wore to one side of his head—the same as the Demon Brothers' headbands from earlier, the Village Hidden in the Mist, as Naruto recalled.

"Ah. You would be Momochi Zabuza, of Kirigakure. I assume you are the person who the Demon Brothers attempted rather ineptly to conceal the existence of?"

The man—Zabuza—laughed. "They spoke? I am not surprised." He finally turned fully around. "I see why they failed. Sharingan no Kakashi...I wonder why you are here?" He gestured at the genin now surrounding Tazuna. "They would explain it. Of course Konoha would place a shinobi like yourself in charge of a team of _brats_. And no doubt someone thought this mission a good introduction...hmm? A good first test, a good, easy beginning?" He laughed. "Just your bad luck, brats, that it was not."

Kakashi shook his head slowly. "The Demon of the Bloody Mist. Have you fallen so far, to be taking on assassinations of poor civilians for a master like Gatou? I remember when you had principles. Absurdly bloody ones, true, but principles nonetheless."

The Kyuubi snorted in Naruto's mind. **This one also calls himself Demon? I suppose he is more deserving of the title than the others.** Naruto firmly shut it out.

Zabuza narrowed his eyes, oblivious to the demon fox's disapproval. "Gatou is rich. He is willing to pay me much money to kill the old man there. I need money. But Gatou...Gatou is nothing but worthless." With a motion too fast to see, he yanked the sword out of the tree and dropped to the ground ahead of them. Naruto looked on, confused. _Wait. How did he pull out the sword he was standing on?_ Zabuza stood with the huge sword across his back, directly between the team and the river across the trail ahead. "I am directed to kill the old man behind you. Will you deliver him, or must I destroy you?"

Kakashi placed one hand on his headband, confusing Naruto. "You think you can?"

Zabuza laughed. "You might even be able to kill me, Sharingan no Kakashi. But I don't think that you can prevent me from killing the old man and all three of your brats." Kakashi tensed up; then, slowly, almost deliberately, he lifted the headband up, uncovering both eyes for the first time Naruto had ever seen. His eye had a long vertical scar over it, continuing over his eyelid, which suddenly opened. His eye was red, that was all Naruto could see...red, with odd black irregularities.

Zabuza laughed. "I am honored. The Sharingan already...well, we'll have to see." Naruto was confused, but glancing to the side he saw that Sasuke was more confused. With good reason, too; how on earth would Kakashi have gotten the sharingan? That was an Uchiha thing.

Zabuza suddenly skipped backwards, standing on the surface of the water. "Now shall we put it to the test?" Ribbons of chakra spun around him for a moment, kicking up spray from the water on which he stood. "Kirigakure no jutsu," he whispered, and the mist closed in.

Naruto glanced around in near panic. He could not see. He could not see anything. Every sound seemed magnified, every shadow ominous, but he could not _see._ He could barely see Sasuke standing next to him.

Then—that power. He had felt killing intent before, but this was more than he had ever imagined. Kakashi, ahead of them, was an indistinct shadow, impossible to see clearly. Sasuke stood to the side, gripping the handle of a kunai as if it was the rope holding him up above a bottomless pit. There was a _pressure_ on Naruto's mind, almost as if someone was crushing his head, forcing him to admit that he was tiny, worthless, helpless. That his life was not his own...then, another pressure, a familiar one this time.

**You see what power is? You can have power.** And there was force, an outward force, and red filled his vision...and then Kakashi did something, something almost explosive, and the mist around them blew away as if in a storm of wind. Naruto forced the red down, as the external pressure of Zabuza's killing intent also subsided. The fox grumbled within him but did not protest.

Kakashi spoke without turning around. "Don't worry. No harm will come to you." He did not address the remarks; they might just as well have been to Tazuna or the genin, but both took it as reassurance. There was a slight relaxation in the air at the dissipation of the enemy's mist.

Then there was a laugh, a long, sincerely amused laugh, seeming to come from all directions. "You say you can prevent it?" And Zabuza appeared, suddenly, straight in the middle of the formation that the genin had established, his huge sword out and ready to swing, and the swing would have cut through all four of them before they could react. Then Kakashi was there, ducking under the sword's hilt, driving a kunai straight into Zabuza's stomach, as the genin leapt backwards, and Tazuna fell over on his butt. And still Zabuza laughed.

Naruto looked at him, incredulous. Kakashi had won, surely; Zabuza was standing there with a kunai lodged in his stomach below the rib cage, Kakashi in front of him, water was dripping from the wound...wait, water?

As that thought crossed his mind, Zabuza fell apart, dissolved into water, and another one appeared behind Kakashi. "Sensei!" he shouted, knowing it was too late, hearing Sakura say the same thing, as the new Zabuza swung his gigantic sword around in a wide arc, catching Kakashi in the middle of it, slicing him straight in half. Blood flew everywhere...no, that was water again. Wait, what?

Another Kakashi appeared, this time standing behind and to the side of the other Zabuza, holding a kunai to his throat. "It's over," he said, almost impassive. Naruto noticed with some frustration that it was almost as impossible to read Kakashi's expressions with both eyes showing as without; he still had that darned mask.

Zabuza was still laughing, which made Naruto nervous, but as far as he could tell Zabuza was beaten. Kakashi was standing there, and any motion Zabuza made would not be finished before Kakashi opened up his throat and probably took off his head. So why....

Zabuza spoke through his laughs. "Indeed, well are you called Sharingan no Kakashi! You copied my water clone without me noticing in the mist! I must congratulate you. But I'm afraid," he turned his head with a sudden predatory gleam in his eye, "that you are a little overconfident."

He spun suddenly, bringing up his sword. Just as predicted, Kakashi violently jerked the kunai through his neck, his head flying off, his body...dissolving into water. Again. Then another Zabuza appeared, again behind Kakashi, and swung his sword. Naruto's warning died on his lips as Kakashi dropped out of the way with astounding speed. The dodge left him vulnerable. Zabuza's sword swung around, stabbed into the ground, and then Zabuza, pivoting on its hilt, spun himself around and kicked Kakashi hard. He flew off, landing in the middle of the river.

Zabuza dashed after him, the edge of the water apparently meaning nothing to him. He ran on the water as easily as he ran on land, coming up alongside Kakashi just as he broke the surface of the water. He made a few hand seals, and suddenly the water flowed up out of the river, around Kakashi, forming a perfect sphere with their sensei trapped in the middle of it. There was a few moments' apparent conversation between the two, and then Zabuza raised a hand—keeping, Naruto noticed, the other embedded in the sphere of water.

"Mizu bunshin no jutsu!"

A copy of Zabuza rose out of the water near the shore, stepping onto dry land with an arrogant tread. His copied sword was slung across his back.

Kakashi shouted at them. "Run! You have to run! You can't beat him, but he has to stay here to keep me trapped. Run!"

Naruto moved forward, almost on instinct. He saw Sasuke doing the same beside. The two glanced at each other, then back at the water clone, grinning.

"We can't run," said Sasuke conversationally. "If we go, this guy can probably kill Kakashi-sensei somehow inside that thing, and then he'll come after us and kill us. Only way we can win is to get Kakashi out."

The clone, close enough to hear their conversation, laughed. "A masterful analysis. A pity you have no chance."

Naruto rubbed his nose thoughtfully. "You know, even when he did the water clone jutsu the real guy back there didn't move his hand from out of that thing Kakashi's in."

Sasuke nodded. "Well, gotta get past this guy first." He indicated the clone.

Naruto nodded. "I'll get right on that. Fighting-A-Jonin formation sound good?"

Sasuke snorted. "Wonderfully creative name you've got there. Sounds good."

Naruto grinned widely and crossed his fingers.

"Tajuu kage bunshin no jutsu!"

The clearing filled with clones. Naruto glanced to one side to see that Sasuke had, according to plan, henged into a copy of Naruto as well. The clones spread out, moving to the edges of the river, making a large semicircle around the water clone of Zabuza. Then they all threw kunai at once.

Zabuza's eyes had widened when Naruto made his clones, but he did not move. The kunai, prepared as usual with exploding tags around the handles, made him do so. He jumped straight back onto the water. The majority of the exploding kunai congregated where he had been, and exploded. A few wild throws were deflected by the clone's sword. Then the clones attacked again.

This time, Zabuza's clone was forced to leap straight up. As the kunai exploded beneath him, the clones threw at him again, in the same technique that had killed Mizuki and forced Kakashi to resort to a quick substitution. The clone did not bother. He whipped his sword around and stood on it in midair. All the kunai, aimed from below as they were, bounced off, but most of them exploded around that time. The water clone was thrown up in the air several more feet by the explosion, shielded by the giant sword. He fell to the surface of the river and sank for a moment before rising up and standing on the surface. The sword was nowhere to be seen.

His face was grim. "Enough," said he. He produced two kunai seemingly from nowhere and charged at the mob of clones.

It was Kakashi all over again. None of the clones had the slightest chance against even a clone of Zabuza. Any of them that entered his reach died, and none landed a single blow upon him. The mob, which had been spread out in a semicircle surrounding the clone, gathered around him, hoping to overwhelm him with force of numbers, but they were unsuccessful. Even the huge number of clones Naruto had summoned began to thin out, throwing themselves against the juggernaut.

One behind him was making seals. Zabuza did not notice. He was supremely aware of any clone that entered his hand-to-hand range, but those beyond did not concern him. They would only die in their turn. Thus, he was startled, if only momentarily inconvenienced, when all the clones around him lunged at once and grabbed his limbs, and more startled at the voice from behind him.

"Katon: goukakyuu no jutsu!"

A fireball engulfed all the clones—the twelve or so of Naruto holding on as well as the one of Zabuza that was the target. Naruto's clones disappeared immediately, leaving puffs of smoke behind. Zabuza's held out for almost a full two seconds in the fire before dissolving into another puddle of water. Sasuke's henge ended as he bent over, panting. Some five of Naruto—all that were left of the original mob of clones—gathered round him.

The original Zabuza, standing still on the surface of the river by Kakashi's prison, raised his eyebrows. "Impressive, brats." He raised his free hand again. "Mizu bunshin no jutsu." Another clone climbed out of the river, standing near the edge. Naruto glanced at Sasuke, releasing his remaining clones.

"That got us absolutely nowhere, didn't it."

"So it seems." Sasuke had recovered a little, and was standing straight. Naruto did not seem to have expended any energy at all.

Zabuza's new clone laughed. "An impressive showing! You caught me by surprise. It won't do you any good, though. You can't keep up attacks of that magnitude for as long as I can keep up making water clones."

Naruto glanced sideways at Sasuke. "Let's find out!" He crossed his fingers again, making another, though smaller, mob of clones. They all charged at Zabuza's water clone nearby. Sasuke was the only one to notice the big shuriken one of them had tossed him as it attacked. He looked it over for a moment, then raised an eyebrow.

The clones had all attacked Zabuza at once. As was more or less predictable, without one throwing heavy jutsus around, they did nothing at all. A single swipe of the big sword dispelled most of them and sent the remainder skidding away, dispersing with muted pops as they went.

Sasuke put the dots together quickly. By this time he had already gotten another shuriken from his pack. He leapt into the air, one of the two unfolded in his hand, the other behind him. "Take this, then!" A shuriken whirled and flew towards Zabuza—straight past the clone, targeting the real one still holding Kakashi prisoner. By the time Sasuke landed, his hands were empty.

Zabuza watched the incoming shuriken without any particular consternation. It was a formidable weapon, spinning at a high rate of speed, closing on him quickly, so fast that his eyes could not track its rotation. But if he moved just so, and grabbed it _here_.... The shuriken stopped dead, abruptly, and Zabuza swung it out to one side to cancel its forward momentum. He grinned at the brats. "Good try, but...." He stopped. Another shuriken had been behind the first. This one was close, too close to grab, and his hand was out of place. It moved towards him as if in slow motion, and, with a sudden, convulsive effort, he leapt—not a leap as any self-respecting ninja would practice, but a desperate yanking of his lower body out of the way. His hand remained in the water prison, maintaining it, as he folded the rest of him up into a tiny space below his head. The shuriken passed straight underneath him, harmless, and he returned to position with a sigh of relief.

"An even better try! I might even acknowledge you as worth fighting. You still have no..." He cut himself off, again, at the sound of a henge behind him. He looked around frantically to see that the shuriken had, in fact, been a loud, annoying, blond _brat_ with a kunai in his hand, who threw it hard at his shoulder with a cry of "Take _this!_ "

Zabuza was faced with a choice. He could remove his hand from the water prison and dodge the kunai, which would leave him unharmed but fighting a pissed-off Sharingan no Kakashi. Or, he could take the shot, which was quite well aimed (Zabuza admitted with grudging respect) at the big, important muscles in his shoulder. The kunai would cripple his arm, and there was no way he would be able to maintain the water prison through that. That option would leave him quite emphatically harmed, and also fighting a pissed-off Sharingan no Kakashi. With one arm.

Zabuza chose the former.

* * *

Sasuke glanced between his teacher and the downed form of Zabuza at the base of the tree in front of him. The power of the Sharingan was...awe-inspiring. Kakashi had the full three-tomoe form, Sasuke had noticed, and his mastery of it—at least, that either had ever shown Sasuke—was at least as great as his father's had been. Of course, it was nothing on Itachi's.

That thought would have thrown him into depression, again, if there had not been important things happening to keep him distracted. Kakashi was threatening Zabuza with death. Routine enough, Sasuke supposed, and he was pissed off enough at Zabuza not to particularly care; he had taken a few hits from that clone when henged into Naruto, and they had _hurt_.

Zabuza was looking up, frightened. Kakashi was about to put his own sword through his neck. Zabuza was—falling over, apparently dead, of three senbon suddenly protruding from his throat. What?

Kakashi looked up, alert again, to see a shinobi in an odd, porcelain mask standing on a tree branch. Sasuke looked at—him? her? Impossible to tell—as closely as he could, but could not discern anything that was not obvious. _I need my Sharingan._

The ninja was jumping down to the ground, approaching Zabuza's body. The ninja was saying something, something about being from Kirigakure and hunting down Zabuza as a traitor. The ninja was picking up Zabuza's body over his? her? shoulder. _They're strong. I could probably do that, but it'd be kind of hard._ The ninja was walking some distance away. The ninja disappeared, probably with a shunshin.

Kakashi looked around, seemingly caught off balance. Sasuke walked over to him. The dobe had crawled out of the river where he had landed from his henge stunt and walked over as well. Both Kakashi and the dobe were soaking wet, but that was trivial.

Kakashi looked at Sasuke. "Listen. I've overused this Sharingan. I'm going to collapse from chakra exhaustion pretty soon now. Get Tazuna home. Get me there. I'll just need to rest. You're in charge until I wake up." The dobe did not comment. Sasuke would have expected him to complain bitterly about that, but apparently he was too high on his earlier triumph to do so. Well, let him be. It _had_ been impressive.

Kakashi reached up and pulled his hitai-ite down over his Sharingan, concealing it again. Then his visible eye rolled up in his head and he collapsed.


	6. Trees

Naruto woke to an unfamiliar ceiling, and it took him a moment to remember where he was. Then it clicked, and he rolled out of the futon that that nice lady had put down for him the previous night. Sasuke's mat beside him was already empty, and a glance out the window in the hallway had the sun well above the horizon.

_Drat. I thought I was on a good rhythm. Note: Sleeping habits do not always withstand major battles._ He moved in a sudden rush downstairs.

Sasuke was sitting at the big table in the dining room, in the midst of eating breakfast. He looked up and gave Naruto his trademark slightly smug fraction of a grin. Naruto stuck his tongue out at the other genin and looked into the kitchen, where Tazuna's daughter—what had her name been?—worked at a stove.

She looked around at the sound of his steps and smiled over her shoulder. "Oh, Naruto-kun! There's some breakfast for you right there." She indicated with her head a counter to the side of the door, with a loaded plate.

Naruto grinned, taking the plate. "Thanks, uh..." He stopped, stumped. The woman laughed. "My name is Tsunami, Naruto-kun."

Naruto rubbed his head sheepishly, balancing the plate on one hand. "Sorry, Tsunami-san."

She waved a hand at him. "No trouble at all. Enjoy the food."

He needed no further invitation, but walked over to the table and sat across from Sasuke. Sasuke had finished his food by now, and cleared it off into a pile near the sink in the kitchen. By the time he had walked back to the table, Naruto was halfway through his own plateful. Sasuke raised an eyebrow.

"You think you're eating fast enough, dobe?"

Naruto rolled his eyes, that being the only retaliatory expression available to him with his hands and mouth wholly occupied. In only a few moments more, he had finished the whole plate.

"I like to call it _expeditious_." Naruto smugly noted Sasuke's momentary surprise; he usually didn't _use_ the sorts of words one came across in the more advanced sealing scrolls, but they came in handy occasionally.

Naruto had just finished clearing his own dishes when there was a sudden, startling thump and crash from upstairs. The two boys glanced at each other and went quickly to the stairs, seeking out the room in which they had slept.

Kakashi was lying on the single elevated bed in the room. His eye was open, surprising both genin, and one hand reached out to the side. On the floor, there was the ceremonial stone statue that had yesterday—and, judging by available evidence, until perhaps thirty seconds ago—sat on the table by the bed. It was evidently the source of the noise.

Sakura ran quickly into the room only moments behind the two other genin. Naruto noted her silence; he had not heard her until only moments before the door opened. _When did she get so quiet?_ That had certainly not been an aspect of her personality that he had noted before; if anything, she was more likely to yell.

Kakashi turned his head towards the three genin. "Hello, there, my shiny genin," he said, his voice almost normal but with a definite note of strain.

Naruto crossed his arms. "What was with knocking stuff around, sensei?"

Kakashi moved his shoulders minutely, a motion that might be interpreted as a shrug if you were looking for it. "I couldn't have shouted loud enough to get your attention."

Naruto's face shifted instantly from mildly belligerent to chagrined. "Oh...uh, sorry, Kakashi-sensei." Kakashi's voice was near its normal volume, but the strain in it led Naruto easily to believe him.

"Listen," said Kakashi. "Zabuza is not dead."

There was an immediate clamor. All three of the genin had seen Zabuza slumped down, hit by the Mist hunter-nin's needles. Kakashi had even checked his pulse before the hunter had removed the body. None of them had doubted that he was dead.

Kakashi waved his free hand in a tiny motion. It took a moment for the genin to recognize the request for silence, but when they did they quieted immediately.

"The hunter-nin hit him with senbon. Precise weapons. Rarely kill. Can be used for difficult medical purposes if hit pressure points. Can put a person in a death state that they can revive from." He took a breath, his voice becoming more labored. "Took his body away. Hunter-nin don't do that. Take apart on the spot. Hunter-nin probably an ally of Zabuza."

The genin had become more and more sober through this declaration. Sasuke spoke first.

"So what do we do, then?"

Kakashi nodded, a tiny motion. "Fulfill mission. Protect Tazuna. Afternoon I will be able to walk. Then train. Until then, you watch." He locked his eye on those of each of his students in turn, receiving each nod. Then, his message delivered, he closed his visible eye and seemingly slept.

There was a moment of silence, then, as if by accord, the genin quietly left the room. It wasn't until they reached the bottom floor that Naruto let out a breath.

"...Wow. That's...serious."

Sasuke nodded, apparently now without any urge to mock the hyper blond.

Sakura was almost white, and her hands were fidgeting around by her sides. "How can that happen? How did he get chakra exhaustion that bad? Normally you should be knocked out before that happens, to be so weak a day later!"

Sasuke glanced at her. "You saw his...eye?"

Sakura nodded, mutely.

"The Sharingan drains chakra quite strongly. In an Uchiha, the eye will shut itself off when chakra gets low. An implanted one takes even more chakra, and you can't turn it off. It's not...right, for his body."

Naruto nodded, still quieter than usual. "I've only read the stuff in the Archive, and they just say that an implanted Sharingan is really dangerous. I'd kinda figured that that was something the Uchiha put about to make it less of a target for people killing them, but I guess...." He shrugged. "Guess not."

He made a visible effort and shrugged off the sober atmosphere. "So, what do we do now?"

Sasuke looked at him sidelong, but played along. "If Zabuza isn't dead, then he might attack here...if he does, we had better know the area. Maybe keep watches...hey, dobe, can you put out clones on watch?"

Naruto nodded. He raised his hands in the cross handseal, but then seemed to think better of it. "Eh...maybe I'd better wait until we're outside."

Sasuke looked at him sardonically. "That would certainly be less disruptive to Tsunami-san than having a stampede of you rushing out the door."

Naruto scratched his head and grinned sheepishly. He had no desire to inconvenience Tsunami, who seemed kind enough and had taken four unexpected houseguests late at night with equanimity and courtesy. Instead, he rushed out the door. Sasuke and Sakura followed, just in time to see a huge mass of smoke, then several hundred clones. Sasuke raised an eyebrow; that was as many as he'd ever seen the dobe do at once.

The clones dispersed quickly, each one running off through the trees as fast as it could. Naruto was left standing in the center of the slightly trampled area left by the mob, grinning. Sasuke walked up to him.

"How many sentries do you think we need?"

Naruto turned to him. "Not sentries! I'm just sending them all out at once so that they get a feel for what this place looks like, so I know it later! That way the sentries later can do stuff better!" He was quite evidently energetic from his night's sleep and good meal, and looking for somewhere to burn it off.

Sasuke nodded fractionally. "Yeah, I guess."

Naruto was still looking around, almost glowing with pent-up exuberance. _Where did this come from all of a sudden?_ "So what do we do until this afternoon?" He was clearly restraining himself from tacking on "Huh? Huh?" to the end of the question; Sasuke was suddenly and forcefully reminded of an overeager puppy. He rolled his eyes.

Sakura spoke when he did not. "Kakashi-sensei said we'd be training. I suppose that we could do that, but we shouldn't wear ourselves out." This with a glance at Naruto, focused specifically on the fifty-foot circle of trampled-down grass around him. Naruto was oblivious.

"Yeah, we should train! Hey, teme, fight me!" The technical slur was spoken with no rancor at all; it seemed an almost pro forma attempt to annoy Sasuke. Sasuke ignored it.

"If you really want to, dobe." He squared off into a stance.

Naruto jumped at him, not even summoning any clones. It was laughable—but, for some reason, it was formidable. He was faster than he had been, and stronger. Sasuke barely managed to block the first three blows—and what was he doing? Those weren't punches, those were _swipes_. It was as if he thought he had claws, or something.

Sasuke blocked two of three blows in a combination by Naruto, taking the third. It threw him back almost ten feet, and Naruto charged him again. This time, more prepared, Sasuke slid around the charge and threw Naruto in return, his momentum sending him through the air to land some twenty feet away. He landed on all fours and ran at Sasuke again, grinning.

This time Sasuke crossed his arms and locked them, taking Naruto's first charge on the wall thereby formed. He was pushed backwards, skidding on his own feet, but managed to stop the charge; Naruto laughed in delight and started swiping at him again—and the blows, unconventional as they were, somehow seemed dangerous. Sasuke found himself dodging rather than blocking, on some instinct afraid of the strikes. Which was ridiculous.

He scowled, annoyed at himself, and stopped one of the swipes. The power behind it was impressive—but he stopped it, and in the opening he created he stepped closer to Naruto and hit him hard just below the ribs. The blow was strong; Sasuke was annoyed, and he was not following his usual instincts to avoid hurting an ally. It should have knocked Naruto back, knocked the wind out of him, at least.

It did not. Naruto took the hit and _smiled_ , and then hit Sasuke with another of those absurd swipes, and it knocked him down.

It knocked him down. A glorified slap, delivered from a position of no leverage, and he had knocked Sasuke down. Granted, it had caught him off guard, but—

Sasuke, lying on his side, rolled over and brought up his arms and legs just in time to catch Naruto, who had jumped on him. He flexed his body, pushing with the feet buried in the hyper dobe's midsection, and threw him backwards, then with an arcing wave of his legs and torso jumped to his feet. He had always been rather proud of being able to do that; it took some flexibility.

It did not impress Naruto. The blond had not been fazed by the many blows he had taken; he charged in again, and Sasuke was fully engaged with blocking or dodging his weirdly powerful strikes.

"When, the hell," Sasuke said between blows, "did you get, so strong?"

Naruto frowned—without, of course, lessening the ferocity of his assault. "You know, I really don't know." He spoke straight through the exertions that Sasuke had had to pause around, which for some reason irritated him indescribably.

_He's controlling the fight. He's on the offensive. That's not what should happen._

_ _Sasuke braced himself against the next few blows without bothering to dodge or block, using his arms instead to hit Naruto with three strikes, first to the torso, then to the face. They did nothing, apparently. Sasuke dropped into a crouch and spun around with one leg extended, hoping to knock Naruto down; Naruto jumped over the sweep and tackled Sasuke from behind, knocking him forwards and the wind out of him. By the time he regained thought processes, the dobe had wrapped his arms around Sasuke's neck, holding him in one of the Academy's standard chokes, though he didn't apply pressure. Sasuke couldn't see him, but he swore he perfectly visualized what Naruto's face would look like—a huge, playful grin.

"Gotcha!" said he, with glee.

Sasuke scowled at the ground which was all he could see.

"Okay, you win, let me up."

Naruto let go and stood up. Sasuke rolled over and scrambled to his feet, his composure ruffled.

" _When_ the _Hell_ did you get so _strong?_ " Sasuke was mystified, frustrated, and slightly annoyed.

Naruto shrugged. "I dunno. I just felt...really energetic all of a sudden."

Sasuke rolled his eyes at Naruto's typical lack of introspection, or eloquence, or basic intelligence. _Well, maybe I'm bitter._

"And where did those...those swipes come from?"

Naruto frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes again. "The swipes, Naruto. You weren't punching me, you were doing something like this." He demonstrated Naruto's motion as best he could, a forehand slap with his fingers bent as if in claws. "Like you thought you had some sort of claws on or something...maybe like those things that the Demon Brothers were wearing?"

Naruto did not hear Sasuke's speculation into idiosyncratic weapons; he had stopped listening at one word. "Claws?" he demanded, suddenly intense. "It looked like I was trying to fight with claws?"

Sasuke looked at him, taken aback. "Yeah, a little. And you got freaky strong. Like, you knocked me down by doing _this_." He demonstrated the swiping motion again.

Naruto looked shaken. "Uh, you know, I'll be, uh, right back, I need to have a talk with, uh, I need to go." He dashed off into the woods.

Sasuke stared after him, mystified.

" _What?_ "

* * *

Naruto stopped at the base of a tree, almost a mile away. He sat down, breathing hard, not with the exertion of the run—for he still felt an odd energy, and an urge to move—but in sudden apprehension.

_Claws. Like I was trying to fight with claws. Fox claws?_

He evened his breathing, closed his eyes, and shouted in his mind. The last time he had tried this, he had exhausted his chakra first so that a bit of the fox's flowed through him, but the fox had proven able to speak to him without that exhaustion; hopefully it would work now.

_Hey, fox, explain this! What are you doing to my fighting?_

He did not fall, did not sleep, but a familiar voice filled his mind.

**You are displeased, whelp?**

_Yeah I'm displeased! What are you doing?_

**You dislike strength? You dislike speed? You dislike being able to overcome your rival?**

_He said I was fighting like I thought I had claws! I don't do that! So you're doing something! What are you doing?_

**I am merely giving you strength. That you think you are fighting as me comes as no surprise. My power; my mind flows with it.**

_I don't like it! What if, when I'm, uh, like that, I go too far and hurt someone? If it's you doing it I think you'd do that happily!_

There was a dark laugh. **You mistake me, whelp. I do not control your actions. A bit of my mind flows into you. You would find it more useful if you drew on more of my power...but you would not, would you, not against that human. In any case, you still have control. This _damned_ seal ensures that....** The fox drifted into angry muttering.

Naruto was still uncertain. _Why are you doing it_ now?

The fox snorted inside his mind, an odd sound, incongruous with its aura of menace. **Now that you _can_ draw upon my power, I wish you to. Imagine sitting without moving a muscle for twelve years.**

Naruto shuddered involuntarily at the thought. _Well...will it hurt anyone?_

**I merely give you strength,** the fox repeated. **What you do with it is your affair. It will hurt no one that you do not attempt to hurt. As for accidents...learn some care.**

Naruto frowned, a familiar annoyance surfacing at the apparent admonishment. Then the absurdity of the Kyuubi no Yoko, the calamity made flesh, chastising him for carelessness struck him, and he laughed.

Pounding footsteps approached through the trees, and Sasuke appeared from the direction of Tazuna's house. He heard Naruto's laugh, and turned slightly, coming up to Naruto and stopping.

"Hey, dobe, you want to tell me what that was about?"

Naruto looked panicked. "Um, I had to, um...."

He trailed off, having no idea what to say. Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Whatever. Just come on back. We shouldn't be too far away from the house when Kakashi-sensei wakes up." He turned around and ran back away, not waiting to make sure Naruto was following him. Naruto stood up and ran after him.

They arrived back at the trampled clearing in front of Tazuna's house. Sakura was waiting with an annoyed expression.

"Hey, baka, where'd you run off to all of a sudden?"

Sasuke glanced at her. "He was sitting under a tree about a mile that way." He indicated the direction, then turned to Naruto. "What were you doing? And why did you need to run off so suddenly?"

Naruto opened his mouth, closed it again, then sighed. "You know, I can't actually tell you. Sorry. I did need to do it just then."

Sasuke stared at him, not satisfied. "What's the big secret? And what does it have to do with you acting like you had claws?"

Naruto shook his head, almost paling. "I can't tell you! Sorry! But I really can't."

Sasuke looked at him for a moment longer, then away. "Whatever, dobe."

Naruto looked around. The house was just as it had been, but more importantly, there was no sign of Kakashi awake, and the sun indicated that the time was just coming noon, a while remaining until Kakashi had said he would train them. "Hey, teme, you want to fight again?" A gleam and an energy came back into his eyes.

Sasuke's still-suspicious expression lapsed into his usual mildly-supercilious I'm-dealing-with-Naruto look. "All right, dobe." They squared off again.

This time, knowing what the fox was doing, Naruto paid attention as he fought, noting his greater strength, his greater speed, the way Sasuke could barely keep up with him, and couldn't block his blows when he did. He also noted his instinctive blow: no longer a straight punch, but an odd swipe. It truly felt as if he had claws on his hands, that would rip and tear with the sort of strike he was using.

_The fox said that it would be more useful if I used more of its power. Does that mean I would grow claws? That's a little bit creepy...._

By the nature of their entrance, the lines did not call attention to themselves. He had noticed that the first time they had manifested themselves, in the hospital; their appearance was less as if they appeared, and more as if he just noticed their being already there. It was for this reason that when Naruto noticed the lines in a momentary break between bouts, he was uncertain if they had just appeared, or they had been there for a while and he had been too distracted to notice. Of course, Naruto was not in a position to really think this question through; he was too busy panicking.

_LINEScrapcrapcrapcrapcrap!_

He fell back, his arms up in a defensive stance, looking around wildly. He did not pay attention to Sasuke, who slid inside his guard and landed several vicious blows to his stomach. They even hurt, which was unusual in this ...whatever-it-was mode that Naruto was in. He instinctively glanced back at his teammate, who had disengaged in fear of a counterattack but looked at Naruto bemusedly when he remained frozen. Not one to leave such an opportunity lying, Sasuke moved back towards Naruto and attacked from the side.

Naruto, distracted from his line-induced panic, turned and engaged Sasuke, at first using only a fraction of his attention, the rest of him still staring at the lines in horrified fascination. Sasuke, however, was not so easy to brush off; even with his new speed and strength, a fraction of Naruto's attention was insufficient to fend him away. Naruto learned this to his detriment when he let fly a careless blow and Sasuke, seeing his opportunity, slipped inside his arm and threw him over his shoulder. Naruto landed on his back, the impact that would ordinarily have knocked the wind out of him hardly an annoyance in his fox-pumped state. Of greater import was his head slamming into the ground, which _hurt_ , and then Sasuke, taking advantage of his momentary disorientation, was kneeling by his head, holding a kunai at his throat.

He grinned. "Submit?"

Naruto grinned back, his fear of the lines displaced by a more familiar adrenaline and combat high, and in a maneuver aided by his new strength, grabbed hold of Sasuke's wrist and wrenched the knife away from his neck. He rolled over, keeping Sasuke's wrist captive, twisting it far enough that after a moment the other boy gasped in pain, released the kunai and twisted free.

The lines still visible everywhere were a distraction, but Sasuke's repeated attacks were a greater one. Naruto was several times forcibly reminded that before the fox's boost, he had been basically unable to defeat him without clones. Even with his now greater speed and strength, Sasuke was a formidable opponent. Naruto took several ugly falls before managing to ignore the lines and focus on his opponent; by the end of the fight, he had almost managed to forget they were there. Almost.

They stopped by mutual accord after nearly another hour of fighting. Sasuke was bent over, gasping for breath. Naruto had been breathing hard for the duration of the fight, but he recovered within a few seconds after they stopped. He grinned at Sasuke cheekily, looking as fresh as when they began; Sasuke looked darkly at him and stood up.

Naruto's good humor began to die as he looked around, black lines still adorning the world. He excused himself to his team and stepped into the trees around, this time not going nearly so far before he stopped.

_Hey, fox. Why the lines?_

The fox seemed distinctly annoyed. **You know, whelp. They come with my power. I strengthen you, and they appear with your strength.**

Naruto frowned. The lines had not yet caused him any disturbing visions, but they were...frightening nonetheless. _Is this going to happen every time I fight anyone? That could be a problem._

**Why should it be? They cause you no pain until you have seen them for a long while, and the time will grow longer as you use them. You simply need to get over your fear.**

Naruto fidgeted, uneasy. The lines, true, were not doing anything to him at the moment; they merely sat there, seemingly innocent but ominous in his eyes. On the other hand...well, really he had no reason to be afraid of them, it was just that whenever he saw them he flashed to the world falling apart around him, those days two years ago in the hospital.

He took a deep breath. _I can deal with it, I think. But how do I turn it off when it starts making me see things?_

**There are ways. I cannot teach them to you. You will have to learn them yourself. Goodbye, whelp.** The Kyuubi's presence in his mind disappeared with finality.

Naruto remained where he was for several minutes. Then, shaking his head sharply, he rose and walked back to his team.

* * *

The genin of Team Seven stood under a tree in a clearing some distance from Tazuna's house. Kakashi had brought them there, walking slowly with a crutch, but awake and upright. Now, Kakashi stood above them, hanging upside down from a tree branch, walking along it perfectly normally as if it was the ground, still leaning on his crutch.

It was a rather surreal sight.

Kakashi addressed them from the branch of the tree. His voice was no longer strained as it had been that morning, but the crutch under his left shoulder drove home his continued weakness just as effectively.

"This is a chakra control exercise. The goal is to concentrate chakra in the soles of your feet and use that to stick to the tree. Then you push chakra through the muscles in your legs to allow you to walk normally even when you're falling in a different direction. It's several times more difficult than the leaf-balancing exercise you should have done in the Academy. Any questions?"

Sasuke looked up at Kakashi. "I understand that chakra control is valuable, but if the goal is to make us stronger to protect Tazuna right away, why not teach us a new technique or something?"

Kakashi nodded. "Here's why: I couldn't teach you all one technique that you could all use effectively. I would have to find out one for each of you that fits your current abilities and style. It wouldn't be the best use of time. With this...with better chakra control, you'll find that you use less chakra on the techniques that you do know, you'll be able to do them with fewer hand signs, and also being able to stick to walls is useful in combat situations. Doing this is the best thing to benefit all of you as much as I can right now. If you finish it before the week ends, I might have some other things for you to learn." Three kunai flew out, embedding themselves in the ground in front of the three genin. "Use those to mark your progress up the trees. You'll want to get a running start for your first few attempts." He limped back along the branch and down the tree trunk, all along looking precisely as if he was simply walking on flat earth, even his hair and clothes seeming to fall towards his feet, as usual, instead of towards the ground which was off to one side. The genin stared at him.

He reached the ground and looked around at them. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get started!"

Almost as one, the three shook their heads and walked over to various trees.

Naruto and Sasuke both simply charged at their selected trees, building up chakra in their feet as they did so. Naruto took a few steps up the tree, fell off, then frowned and paced back and forth for a moment on the ground, trying to get the feeling of the chakra push into his memory. Then he ran back up the tree, this time making it nearly twice as high as he had before—farther than Sasuke, who had tried some five times by this point. Sasuke looked over at him in surprise.

"How'd you do that?"

Naruto walked back and forth again on the ground, pushing chakra through his feet. "Try doing it on the ground first. See if you can get the feeling of pushing chakra without being afraid of falling. There was something like this in some book in the Archives, but they said it was for sticking to the ground in taijutsu, like if someone's pushing you."

Sasuke glanced aside at Naruto and followed suit. After a few repetitions of the grounded exercise, he tried dashing at the tree again and rose somewhat higher than before.

"Good idea, dobe." Sasuke smirked at Naruto. "Bets on who gets it first?"

Naruto grinned. "No bets. Wouldn't feel right, to bet on a sure thing."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow and made a derogatory noise before turning back to his tree. Naruto was about to do the same when they were interrupted by a voice.

"You two gentlemen may wish to look over here," said Sakura, her tone of affected sweetness shading into annoyance. Naruto and Sasuke both looked over at her, to see her standing straight sideways on the trunk of the tree, waving at them. As they watched, she proceeded to walk several times around the trunk, then up and down, and finally out onto a branch upside-down as Kakashi had done. This last defeated her, and she fell, flipping gracefully over to land on her feet.

Naruto's mouth had somehow fallen open during this demonstration, and he consciously closed it before replying. "Sakura! How did you do that?"

Sakura rolled her eyes at him, but shot a covert glance at Sasuke. He was staring at her with more interest than he had ever shown her before, for certain, and she grinned inwardly in satisfaction. Outwardly she maintained a rather supercilious look while answering Naruto.

"You should try doing it slowly, rather than just charging at the tree all the time. Just pay a lot of attention to your chakra while you're doing it."

Naruto nodded, grinned, and ran back to the tree. This time, with a noticeable effort, he kept himself from charging up it, and instead channeled his chakra to his feet and simply placed one foot on the trunk. It stuck, and Naruto frowned as he concentrated on it. There...and _there_ , was the right amount—his foot no longer slipping, not in danger of falling off, nor with the slightly magnetic sensation of too much chakra. He took a step, falling back to ninety degrees from the tree and holding that angle, placing his other foot. When he lifted his foot to take a step, it moved away, even without a conscious effort to mold the chakra to allow it. Convenient.

He made it two more steps before his control faltered and he fell again. This time, unfortunately, he was not so high as to be able to land on his feet. He fell on his back with a grunt, happily this time able to hold his head up and keep it off the ground.

He sat up just in time to see Sasuke have a similar accident. He managed to avoid laughing at him.

* * *

Kakashi came back later that evening to find both Sasuke and Naruto able to reliably run to the top of their tree, at any rate, though neither could stay on for longer than that as could Sakura. He was quite impressed with Sakura's progress; Naruto had advised her to surprise him by addressing him from upside- down on a branch, as Kakashi himself had stood earlier, and his momentary stunned pause had been most vindicating. Dinner with Tazuna's family was most well appreciated, by Naruto in particular, and sleep was deep and peaceful.

The next morning had them back at the same clearing, training in tree climbing. Kakashi, still too weak for combat but at least no longer walking with a crutch, watched Sakura stroll nonchalantly around her tree-trunk at all angles and judged her to be carrying out the tree-walking exercise as well as anyone could. It was therefore ruled that Kakashi would go with Tazuna to the bridge site and take Sakura along to work on more advanced exercises; Naruto and Sasuke were told to work until they could do the exercise at the level Sakura had when she finished.

Naruto knew _something_ was different as soon as he stepped up onto the tree. (He had stopped running at it as soon as he could reach the top; his goal now was to be able to treat it just like the ground, like Kakashi and now Sakura could. Sakura was impressive! He wouldn't have guessed from knowing her in the Academy, or even as a genin before now, that there would be an area of ninja life that she would naturally excel at.)

At any rate. The feeling was different. It wasn't so difficult; he found himself able to do it with less conscious effort than he had the day before. He frowned, walking around on the trunk, wondering what had changed. Why did he keep thinking it should be night? And what was—

Ah. That was it. Naruto laughed.

Sasuke glanced over at him, noticing his seemingly greater proficiency. "What's amusing?"

Naruto looked at him with a grin. "Seems like a bunch of the sentry clones I put out last night decided to work on their tree walking because they were bored. I started up and I suddenly got about five different viewpoints that thought it was still nighttime." He frowned. "I was asleep when they dispersed...huh. I guess I do get the memories if I'm asleep, but they don't wake me up. I wonder why?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Not what's relevant right now, dobe. So you get the clones' training?"

Naruto nodded. "Guess so. Cool!"

Sasuke smirked at him. "Yeah, I think that could work out really well for you, Mister I-Am-My-Own-Personal-Army."

Naruto lost his control and fell off the trunk. This time, he was high enough to flip over and land on his feet.

"Yeah, I think it could." He grinned cheekily and crossed his hands. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!"

Five clones appeared around him, dispersing to five different trees. Each one started walking up its own tree, simply walking around on the trunk. Naruto followed suit a moment later, with another glance at Sasuke.

"Hey, teme, wanna see who gets it first?"

Sasuke looked at him sardonically. "Suddenly I'm glad we didn't make any bets."

* * *

Naruto finished his tree climbing before noon and sent a clone off to the bridge to get Kakashi to verify it. To pass the time while the clone searched for his sensei, he stood on the tree and walked up and down it, trying to find out exactly what was happening at the soles of his feet. He felt the chakra gathered in his feet, tingling slightly; he felt the chakra reinforcing his legs, core and back, allowing him to successfully stand straight out from a tree at a right angle to the force of gravity. (Whatever Kakashi was doing to make it look precisely as if he was standing on the ground, Naruto didn't know; his own clothes and hair stubbornly fell in the direction of the earth, and he was unable to stop them.) He felt the well of his chakra within him, and he was aware of his mind dipping into the well and directing the flow to his feet and legs.

Just to see what would happen, he throttled the flow down, steadily, examining the feeling in his feet. He stayed attached to the tree, but the feeling was less secure, he felt less connected...and then, suddenly, he dropped below some threshold, and he lost his grip and fell. He flipped to land, and Sasuke, only about an hour behind him despite his advantage of clones, looked over at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Here I thought you had it already, dobe."

"I do," said Naruto, absently. The feeling that had preceded the fall was familiar. It had been what had happened in nine of ten falls that he had taken during the training...but there had been others. _What happened there, then?_ As another exercise, he stepped back onto the tree and walked up to a high vantage point. This time, instead of throttling back the flow of chakra that held him to the trunk, he increased it.

The attraction held, for quite some time. As he increased the chakra to his feet, he felt steadily more attached to the tree trunk, as if it would take a hurricane to move him. Then, with further increases, something destabilized. Forces once allied turned against each other; he felt a chaotic swirl of chakra in his feet, and he suddenly shot away from the trunk with a yell of surprise.

He flubbed his landing, thankfully not injuring himself, and glanced back at the tree. Sasuke had looked at him with similar startlement when he suddenly flew, and seemed about to comment, but Naruto was interested. _I felt that before...that happened a few times when I fell. I never flew away like that, though. Maybe I was using more chakra this time?_

He walked back over to his tree and started up it again. It was only when he nearly stepped in them that he noticed the two splintered holes in the trunk, as if something had punched straight through the bark and the first few layers of wood. They were positioned just where his feet had been thirty seconds ago.

He hailed Sasuke. "Hey, Sasuke, come over and look at this!"

The other boy dropped from his own tree and ran up Naruto's. He was far enough along in his training that he could reliably stand still, at any rate, and he stood sideways next to Naruto looking "down" at the trunk. He saw the two holes and almost laughed.

"Wow, dobe, at least you managed to mess up spectacularly."

Naruto looked at him darkly. "I was experimenting, teme. But isn't that cool? I did the same thing a few times when I was practicing, but without so much chakra behind it, so it didn't make any holes in the trunk. I think it's what happens when you use too much chakra and don't control the flow."

Sasuke nodded. "Makes sense. And if you ever really need to put a hole in a tree trunk with your feet, you can use it for that, too."

Naruto rolled his eyes at this and jumped back to the ground. "Hey, I wonder..."

He focused his chakra, doing the exercise again, this time on the ground. Then, as before, he pushed as much chakra into his feet as he could, pushed until the flow broke into turbulence, and suddenly he flew.

He topped out at about thirty feet in the air and fell again to the ground. Sasuke laughed.

"A new way to jump, without using your legs. Such useful things you come up with, dobe."

"Seems to be of limited utility," Naruto admitted, standing up. "Well, it's a way to make craters, anyway." He indicated the ground where he had stood, where a crater like that from a moderately sized explosive tag had formed around the location of his feet.

Sasuke shook his head and went back to his tree. Naruto followed suit, just pacing back and forth on the trunk and branches of the tree. He delved into his mind as he worked, feeling the tap on his chakra, the well within him, the flow through his feet...He did not play any more games with the flow, simply letting his awareness know of the chakra and relaxing.

As he walked along the tree, he became aware of another feeling, seemingly parallel to the well of his chakra coils. There was something else there...almost as if there was a thin barrier within his chakra supply. And what was there? He frowned and, with a mental flick, breached the barrier, letting the tap on his chakra past it to feed on what was behind.

Red flashed across his vision, strangely enough without affecting what he saw at all. It was a very familiar feeling, but he did not have time to examine it, because he was flying suddenly away from the tree, there was a loud noise in his ears, where was that roaring coming from?, and then there was a tree and OH CRAP flip land no time to stick jump fall ground...

He was on the ground, in a squat, though he could not remember taking that position. He couldn't hear anything. No, that wasn't right. He could hear something, and it wouldn't stop. It was roaring. That was it.

Sasuke was standing in front of him, saying something. He couldn't hear it, just the continued roaring. Sasuke spoke again, more emphatically. It looked like he was getting annoyed. Naruto pointed at his ears. _I can't hear you,_ he tried to say, but he had no idea if he had actually spoken.

Sasuke's mouth twitched as if in amusement. Sasuke was pointing at the tree Naruto had been standing on. Wait. There wasn't a tree there anymore. It was just—

Oh. That was a tree trunk. It was hard to tell, almost. It looked like the top of the tree had just exploded violently. Maybe the rest of it had fallen and was around somewhere.

There were lines on the broken tree trunk. That was funny. There weren't usually lines there.

The roaring began to fade, and Naruto shaded back into lucidity. Lines. Okay. That meant that that chakra behind the barrier in his mind must have been the fox's. All right. Note to self: Don't do that again.

_Not unless I really need the power for something, anyway._

The lines were already fading. Naruto supposed that made sense. He had only had the fox's chakra in him for some tiny amount of time, not like when he became exhausted and it was flowing through his coils for long periods of time.

Sasuke was talking again. He still couldn't distinguish the words, but he could hear that he was saying something. "I can't hear you," said Naruto, once he had finished. He still couldn't hear himself talk, but he was sure at least that he had said _something_.

Sasuke nodded and turned back to his tree-walking. Naruto stood up, slowly, getting acquainted with the idea of moving. He could mostly do it without problem. He became aware of a pain in his knee. Must have happened when he ran into the tree.

All things considered, Naruto decided that he might as well take a break from tree-walking for the moment. He was sitting under a tree, getting himself back in order, when he got a load of memories from a clone.

He froze for a moment as he sorted through them. Message delivered to Kakashi, right. Kakashi coming back at lunchtime. Right. Route to the bridge—he laughed. When they walked from the bridge to Tazuna's house the first time, when they confronted Zabuza, it had taken them several long hours, much of that time taken up in carrying Kakashi over the final leg. The path Tsunami had directed his clone along was only half an hour's walk from their house. Why...oh. The clone had crossed a bridge with a little box where sat a few rather thuggish watchers. Tazuna must have wanted to avoid them. Why, Naruto had no idea—it wasn't like he could _hide_ that he was back, or that there were ninja with him. Whatever.

* * *

Kakashi arrived at the clearing an hour after noon. He watched Naruto wander around on his tree—a new one, this time—and even practice a few taijutsu stances and forms without his control faltering. Sasuke, by this time, had practiced to the point where he thought he was also finished; he exhibited that ability, though he left out the taijutsu practice, and Kakashi judged him ready as well. Both of them followed him back to the bridge when he went back, carrying several packed lunches from Tsunami.

They reached the bridge after a pleasant walk. Tazuna's house was offset from the town, surrounded by forests, and the area around it was beautiful. The town, however, was depressing in its dilapidation. Only a few stores along the main street were operational; they were vastly outnumbered by the many boarded-up and damaged buildings throughout the rest of the town.

The bridge began in the dockside district of the town, feeding into a street that branched off from the main road. The three shinobi walked out onto the bridge. It was nearly a half-mile long already, and it reached about three- quarters of the way to the mainland of the Land of Fire. When it was finished, it would be wide and high, wide enough for three wagons to pass side by side; now it was largely clogged with supplies, tools, and the random detritus of construction, leaving a corridor wide enough for several to walk abreast. The occasional worker was visible doing some arbitrary task among the piles, but the majority of them were out at the end, where there was a longish clear area occupied by Tazuna and a bustle of workers doing...worker-ish stuff. Naruto didn't know contruction work well enough to know what they were doing, but they looked busy.

Sakura was standing by Tazuna, looking alert but slightly annoyed. Kakashi led the other two genin over to her; she noticed them halfway along and looked at Kakashi with relief. Kakashi signalled her over to join the other two genin and went over to Tazuna himself, whispering in his ear. Tazuna nodded and went back to what he had been doing, which amounted to directing various of the workers in whatever mysterious things _they_ were doing. Naruto was struck by how much more competent he seemed when he wasn't drunk.

Kakashi walked back over to the genin, then beckoned them towards the edge of the bridge. The three followed him as he reached the edge, then, without ceremony, stepped over it and continued straight down the side. Sakura followed. Both Naruto and Sasuke hesistated for a moment at the edge, before Kakashi's voice floated up from below. "Hey! What are you two waiting for?"

Sasuke stepped rather gingerly over the edge, sticking himself to the vertical stone. Naruto followed suit after a moment, and they continued to walk straight down until they were only a few feet above the water. They stood in a circle, Kakashi on the bottom looking up, as their teacher addressed them.

"This is where you'll be training for the next while. One of us will always be up above, playing bodyguard to Tazuna. That will usually be me, but I will have you people taking shifts at it. Consider it a learning experience." Naruto sighed as Kakashi went on. "Something you should keep in mind. There's probably no real threat yet. To have put Zabuza out the way that hunter-nin did, he should still be weak for several more days, at least. Which is a good thing, because I am still not up to fighting capacity." He paused for a moment, then continued. "Bearing that in mind, I still expect you three to take your shifts as bodyguard entirely seriously. It's not something to treat as a game, or just some troublesome task which you have to complete. You pay attention, you remain alert, you remain professional, and you remember that if something threatens Tazuna, it is your job to make the threat go away. Is that clear?"

All three genin nodded, Sakura with a mildly shamefaced look.

Kakashi smiled. "Good! All right then, I'm off to do, well, that. Sakura, why don't you explain the water-walking exercise to these two?" He disappeared in a shunshin.

Sakura sighed. "All right! The next thing is to be able to walk on the surface of water. You start out in there," she indicated the relatively calmer stretch of water under the nearest arch of the bridge, "then, when you've got that, you can try it out there." She pointed at the open water of the strait, which was choppy with wind. "It works more or less like tree walking, except that you're not just holding chakra in your feet to stick to the tree, you're releasing it constantly into the water to harden it and make it hold you up. Like this." She demonstrated by walking briskly down the remainder of the bridge and stepping carefully onto the water's surface, taking a few tentative steps forwards before turning around. "It's easier at first to do this," she said, indicating her feet, which were steady with the waves washing over them, "but Kakashi-sensei won't pass you until you can do this." She raised her arms out to the sides in aid of balance, then did something, and her feet lifted up, staying flat on the water's surface even as it rose and fell in waves. This, of course, led to Sakura herself bobbing rather comically up and down, though she attempted to compensate with her knees. After only a few moments she lapsed back into the more stable technique, then walked back over to the bridge and stepped onto the stone, walking up towards them. "So that's it. You start out in there." She pointed again at the dark but calm water under the bridge. "I've got to get this right..." she muttered, going back to her own exercise.

Naruto walked under the arch of the bridge on the stone, moving from bright sun to darker shadow as he walked. He contemplated the gently waving water below him. _Have to walk on that...sounds hard._ He wondered for a moment, then shook his head and stepped down onto the water.

It was different from tree climbing. The first part was the same, but when he put his foot, laden with chakra, down onto the water, the water seemed to absorb it right from his foot. Putting weight on the one foot now on the water, he stood for a moment; then the chakra in his foot was depleted and he needed more, so he fed it more, but it was too quick, his foot was pushed up from the surface, then he lost control and fell.

He soaked his leg up to the knee before managing to catch the bridge-wall with his hands. Then he pulled himself up again to stand on the wall and contemplated. The water absorbed his chakra and seemed to disperse it. He needed a greater flow for this.

He stepped down onto the water's surface again, this time putting only enough weight on the leg to tell if the technique was working, and fed chakra to it. It worked—and this time, he could make the flow even. He grinned in triumph and put more weight on the foot— _it held!_ —then put his other foot on the water as well, duplicating the flow trick. It worked! He laughed and let out a whoop.

One step out, something happened. Flows conflicted—the chakra destabilized—his control collapsed, and he fell sputtering into the sea. He came up a moment later, soaked to the skin, and paddled back to the wall, annoyed.

A few falls later, Naruto noticed that he was getting _cold_ when he climbed out of the water, even colder than the rather cold water made him. _Crap. Getting too cold—and these clothes aren't helping, they're just wet._

Well, he could at least make sure that he would have warm clothes when he got out. Naruto walked up the wall again, enjoying the momentary time in the warmer sunshine. He stepped over the rail at the edge of the bridge and shook himself, dislodging quite some amount of water from his hair and clothes, then peeled off his bright orange shirt and pants and wrung them out over the bridge-side as best he could. He lay them out on the warm stone and prepared to go back down the side.

Kakashi was standing by Tazuna, some thirty feet distant. He waved desultorily at Naruto as he passed, and raised an eyebrow in what might have been amusement. Naruto saw, half amused and half annoyed, that Kakashi was reading his trademark little orange book. _Stay alert, my butt..._

Clad only in soaking-wet boxers and his sandals, he walked back down the bridge side into the shaded space of the arch. Unfortunately, Sakura was close to the entrance. She began shouting at him.

"Baka! Why are you running around half-naked?"

Naruto looked at her with annoyance. "Well, what do you expect, I keep getting my clothes all wet? Geez."

"I didn't ever need to do that!" she said, almost vibrating in her fury.

"Well, you're, like, the insanely-perfect-control person, aren't you?" he replied.

She fumed for a moment, then suddenly looked at him more closely. "Naruto," she said, in a less aggrieved tone, "what is that?"

He was uncertain what she was referring to, until he glanced down. A large, spiral-shaped seal adorned his stomach.

He didn't know what to think. It was obvious what the seal was, and part of him was panicking about what to tell her. Another part was wondering where the heck this had been every other time he took off his shirt all his life. A third, which had spent most of its mental cycles in the Archive looking at seal books, was enthralled by the intricacy of the work, and wanted to immediately spend the next five hours poring over his stomach to try and understand it.

Only the first part of his mind was making any claim to his vocal cords, but it didn't have any idea what to say. "Uh...well, it's, uh...just this thing." He tried to make the words sound off-hand, but failed miserably. Sakura drew herself up and scowled at him.

"What do you mean, just this thing? What does it do?"

Naruto sighed. "I'm sorry, Sakura, I can't tell you."

She scowled more deeply. "Just like you couldn't tell us why you ran off into nowhere for no reason yesterday?"

Naruto winced. He had forgotten about that. "Yeah. I just really can't. Sorry."

Sakura stared at him for several more seconds. Then she snorted. "Fine." She turned back around and began walking on the water back out into the higher waves. "Just don't do anything perverted!" she shouted back over her shoulder.

Naruto scowled. "Perverted? I'm the one who's mostly naked! What am I going to do, peep at myself?" He turned away, himself standing on the wall, and walked into the arched space. Sasuke pulled himself out of the water, as wet as Naruto, and glanced over at him. Then, without a word, he walked up the side of the bridge as well.

Naruto glanced over when Sasuke came back down. He had removed his shirt and arm warmers, though his shorts remained on. Sakura was visible just behind him, her face blushing brightly.

_Sure, she doesn't complain about_ him.


	7. Bombs

Water walking was harder than tree walking. It also progressed in a frustratingly nonlinear fashion. By the end of that day, Naruto could reliably stand just below the surface, anyway, though he could not match Sakura's feat of standing flat on the surface itself. But every step he took was another challenge, each interaction of muscle and bone and sea unique and impossible to simply memorize a method for. The point of the exercise seemed not to be to teach them a chakra control method, but to teach them to come up with a new one on the fly every time they took a step. He could do it once, twice, but he was nowhere near Sakura's ability to walk naturally.

Kakashi appeared on the wall above them later that evening. The clamor of construction work had slackened off over the past half-hour, the bridge having advanced in length a measurable amount towards the next great pylon, which had already been sunk and waited beyond the end of the bridge as if lonely for its intended purpose. Kakashi stood on the stone of the bridge, beckoning, and all three genin congregated around him. Naruto wondered idly when he had begun to consider standing sideways on a wall a welcome break.

Naruto was still mostly unclothed—his mistakes, unfortunately, still usually ended with him sputtering in the water—and Kakashi raised an eyebrow at the visible seal on his stomach. He did not react further, though, and Naruto was grateful. Sakura was easily distracted by either chakra control training or Sasuke without a shirt, but Sasuke was clearly getting suspicious about the several oddities Naruto had displayed.

Kakashi smiled at the genin as they gathered around him, then beckoned them up to the top of the bridge. They were walking Tazuna home before Naruto got a chance to speak.

"Sensei, why is this so hard? Tree walking was a lot easier!"

Kakashi looked over at him. As usual, he was reading his orange book.

"Ne, Naruto, you'll have to be a little more specific than that."

Naruto frowned. "It's like, I take a step, and it works, and then when I do the same thing next step I fall in. So I do it again, and it doesn't work. So I find out a way to do it, and that one only works once. At least climbing trees I only had to learn one thing!"

Kakashi glanced over at Naruto with a raised eyebrow. "Tell me, Naruto, do you remember learning how to walk?"

Naruto scowled at him. "No, I don't! Nobody remembers that! What does that have to do with anything?"

Kakashi turned back to his book as he spoke. "When you first began to walk, especially on uneven ground, you would have had a similar experience."

Naruto stopped for a moment, staring at him, then ran ahead to catch up. "Sensei! What does that mean?"

"The purpose behind the water-walking exercise is not to learn a single pattern, the way it is for tree-walking. The purpose is to teach you how to adjust your patterns as you move so as to remain stable. When you stand on one foot, how do you stay up?"

Naruto looked at him quizzically. "I just do."

Kakashi sighed. "What you do, at a level too low for you to be aware of it, is you feel in which direction you are falling, and you adjust your stance to compensate. Water walking requires you to do the same thing, except with your chakra. Don't think of it as coming up with a different exercise each time, like you seem to be. Try to feel the way your feet are moving with the water, and keep them stable by altering the flow."

Naruto sighed. "Okay, I'll try that tomorrow."

The next day, instead of simply turning them loose to train, Kakashi went with them down the side of the bridge, and when they made as if to begin he held them back.

"Naruto, Sasuke. If I understand correctly, you two have been training against each other regularly both in Konoha and here. Is that so?"

Sasuke nodded, and Naruto grinned. "Yep!"

Kakashi inclined his head at them. "That is admirable. However, I believe that you may be creating a dynamic that excludes Sakura, and it is vital to ensure that every team member feels like part of the team."

All three genin looked at him with sudden startlement; Naruto with a dubious air, Sasuke more so, and Sakura with sudden hope. Kakashi went on. "Unfortunately, from what I have seen, in basically unregulated sparring such as you have done, Sakura is not sufficiently skilled in taijutsu to keep up, or really to derive much benefit from the exercise." This time, he looked at Sakura; she blushed, looked down, and nodded shamefacedly. "Therefore!" Kakashi eye-smiled at all three, and Naruto felt a sudden premonition of dread. "Sakura, while less skilled at taijutsu, excels at chakra control, and I verified yesterday that she has mastered the water walking exercise." Both the boys looked at Sakura, startled, and she fidgeted nervously. "So I want you three to take turns in sparring on the surface of the water. With the problems that you both have had with the water-walking exercise, I believe Sakura will be a more than credible opponent, and the difficulty of the task will aid your own control. Sakura, this is an exercise both of your taijutsu skill and your chakra capacity. The water-walking exercise takes up quite a bit of chakra, more so than tree-walking, and I saw yesterday that you were taking frequent breaks on the wall. So push yourself to build up your capacity. I don't want to hear of you drowning yourself, but you should wait to rest until it becomes quite difficult for you to continue." All three genin were now looking crestfallen, for one reason or another.

Kakashi smiled at them again. "I'm taking shift with Tazuna. Go to it!" He disappeared.

The three genin stared at each other for several moments, then Sakura shook herself, turned slowly and walked down the bridge to the water. Naruto and Sasuke followed a moment later.

Naruto stood on the water—well, marginally under the water. He could stand stably now, which was a plus. Every step he took, however, had about one chance in two of losing control and dropping him into the sea.

Sakura stood across from him. She balanced perfectly on the surface, eschewing the ease and steadier footing of standing beneath for better control training. Naruto didn't know why she bothered; it wasn't as if she really needed training to get any sort of control exercise. He wasn't sure whether to be impressed or annoyed.

They stared at each other. Despite being her teammate, Naruto had never actually sparred against Sakura. He had not seen her fight during their bell test, only seeing her caught in Kakashi's genjutsu. His latest experience with her ability was her scores in Academy taijutsu training, months ago now; while he was usually in the top third, and Sasuke, of course, was first every time, Sakura hadn't really signified. He had never doubted that his taijutsu was superior to hers. Now, of course, he couldn't _walk,_ which would no doubt have a significant equalizing effect.

Sasuke, standing off to one side, lazily waved a hand. "Begin." Then, ignoring the match, he went back to practicing his own water walking. To avoid collisions, the three were quite a distance from the bridge, which meant that not only were the waves a constant distraction, but falling in meant swimming back to the bridge to climb out before trying again. This, of course, put some significant friction in the training process.

Sakura darted towards him, just as agile here as on dry land. The move, though it would have been impressively fast to civilian eyes, almost seemed dragging compared to Sasuke, and Naruto had no trouble blocking the punches that followed. He almost reacted, retaliated, but caught himself at the last moment—he couldn't take steps reliably without falling, and she was by now out of his reach.

While she wasn't particularly good at taijutsu, no one had ever accused Sakura of unintelligence. The next attack kept her out of his reach from the start, instead striking at him with several kicks to the legs—the sort of thing which, by the book, one was supposed to leap over to dodge, lest they catch the target's balance and knock him over. Ordinarily, Naruto was strong enough to take such blows in stride; now, with his balance shaky enough already, that did not seem prudent. He leaned forwards and blocked the kicks with his arms, but his attempt at a countering throw was unsuccessful. Sakura danced back, and this time stayed away. Naruto silently cursed his enforced stillness.

Her next attack came from directly behind, which was cursedly inconvenient. Naruto took a few blows to the head and neck without flinching, but then Sakura got the idea of going after his legs again. In sudden panic, Naruto tried to turn around. He took one step, two. He almost thought he would succeed as he planted his foot in his final stance—and it broke through the surface and he fell.

Naruto swam off towards the bridge, disgruntled. As he climbed out, he noticed Sakura with a rather smug look on her face. Grumbling, he crossed his fingers in his favorite sign. Some score of clones popped into existence on the bridgeside, and all of them stepped down onto the water. Naruto himself began the long, tedious process of walking back out to where Sasuke and Sakura now fought, placing each foot carefully and delicately sculpting the chakra flow over almost a minute so that it would stay up.

It was another few hours before Naruto could walk reliably enough to fight at all well. His clones kept practicing the walking exercise alone; Naruto did so as well, between his bouts with Sakura. These were humiliating. Sakura had taken no sudden leap in taijutsu skill, but she had quickly gotten the idea as to how to fight a superior combatant who was essentially glued to the ground. She kept her distance and attacked the boys' balance. Once Naruto managed to snag her with a lucky grab, and then she was helpless; but when she controlled the range she was impossible. Sasuke, of course, managed it somewhat more often than Naruto; this was, perhaps, helped along by the fact that Sakura didn't really seem to mind Sasuke grabbing her in some full-contact taijutsu hold.

His first match with Sasuke was only after both had advanced rather a lot in the water-walking exercise. (It had been mutually agreed that a match in which neither could move would be less than useful.) This was when Naruto became _extremely annoyed _at the Kyuubi, because not more than a minute after the unusually slow match began, he felt a familiar energy pulse through him, his strength and speed increased dramatically, and his chakra control was shot to hell.

He fell immediately, drawing a sardonic look from Sasuke. It was a long swim to the bridgeside to climb out, and completely impossible to walk back. He couldn't even stand on the water. It took several minutes for the Kyuubi's chakra to fade entirely out of his system so he could begin the walk—still a rather slow process, but now at least each step was only ten seconds, rather than a minute. And the moment he faced Sasuke again, it came back and he fell.

Supremely irritated, the next iteration he asked Sasuke to fight nearer the bridge. Sasuke agreed with a supercilious eyebrow. The next half-hour was an extremely aggravating experience; he fought desperately to hold down the Kyuubi's chakra, or to control it well enough to walk with it. Eventually he managed a kind of mix of the two, which left him marginally stronger and faster while able at least to stand still. Sasuke, who had no such handicap, needless to say trounced him thoroughly each of the half-dozen times they sparred. After his tenth fall, Naruto growled wordlessly and waved Sasuke off.

"I need to get this under control. You should work with Sakura."

Sasuke smirked at him and jogged off. Naruto stood sideways on the bridge, grumbling under his breath. The Kyuubi's boost had left him as soon as Sasuke left, but he didn't have the luxury of practicing with it only when Kyuubi thought he was facing a worthy opponent—that would have pissed Sasuke off no end, being tied up catalyzing his training, and in any event it would raise questions that Naruto could not answer.

He reached down inside himself. It was a similar feeling to simply boosting his muscle strength with chakra, but different—and it drew on the Kyuubi's chakra, but it did not overload whatever he was doing, as simply accessing the chakra while he was tree-climbing had. Whatever techniques he used _remained_ ; he simply lost all control over them—hence his falling.

It was a few minutes of frustrating meditation before he got the feeling again, and it was weak compared to when he fought Sasuke. The chakra in his feet stirred uneasily, his control over the technique wavering as it hadn't since, well, the previous day. He concentrated, splitting his mind, half concentrating on the wall-walking technique, half on the Kyuubi's boost. After a moment, he managed to stabilize the chakra in his feet, only a moment later to lose the boost. He growled in frustration and metaphorically yanked on the fox's chakra again, regaining his bit of boost but feeling the same destabilization in his feet. By the time he controlled his technique again, he had lost the boost.

Naruto decided that he needed a new approach. He walked up the bridge and stood on flat ground for the first time since that morning. It took a conscious effort to turn off the chakra to his feet and walk normally again. He was surrounded by a bustle of noise. Naruto was off to one side, but before him was a constant parade of workers, going back and forth between the huge quantities of stacked building materials and the bridge-end where they were being put into place.

He walked back and forth a few times just to get used to the novelty, then sat and concentrated, trying to call up the boost without the distraction of dealing with a chakra technique at the same time. Sure enough, he soon got a bit of it, but it was still far less than had shown up uninvited both times he fought Sasuke. As a test, he stood and ran in small, elongated circles, trying to stay out of the paths of the workers. He was, indeed, faster, but it was a tiny effect.

Naruto growled and tried again. As soon as he felt the boost, he pulled on it, dragging out as much chakra as he could. It was still nowhere near the amount that he had felt before, and as soon as he stopped concentrating, it lapsed.

Several more iterations of this provided no further improvement. He was trying again when a voice from behind him startled him out of his meditation.

"Eh, Naruto, why are you not doing the training? It's not like you to quit so soon."

Naruto spun around as best he could while still sitting down. Kakashi stood behind him, looking down on him with unconcern. Naruto was frantically trying to decide what to say when he remembered: _Kakashi already knows._ He didn't have to come up with some lie. He sighed with relief.

"Kakashi-sensei, uh, there's this thing that happened when I fought with Sasuke a couple days ago, maybe in the fight with Zabuza too, I didn't notice, but, um, my inner furball—" he indicated his stomach, and Kakashi raised an eyebrow and became somehow more serious in demeanor "—does something with its chakra that makes me get stronger and faster. Except that it also happened when I fought Sasuke down there, and apparently whatever it does makes my chakra control, like, really horrible. I can hardly hold wall-walking, don't even think about water. So I'm up here trying to get control of that so I can figure it out, so hopefully I can actually fight on the water without falling in."

Kakashi stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "Well, that's a good idea, Naruto. I can't really give you any advice on that. Just," he sighed, "don't trust the fox's motives. It might try to spring something like this on you when it would hurt you in a fight. Be ready."

Naruto tilted his head sideways, looking at his sensei. "Well, it says that if I die it dies, so I don't think it would do that."

Kakashi's eye widened, and he tensed up for a moment before making a visible effort to calm down. "It's spoken to you?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. It's kinda rude, too. Always calling me whelp, or something."

Kakashi sighed and shook his head. "Wonderful...do you feel that you have control of it?"

Naruto looked puzzled. "Well, it's not like I control it, but I don't think it can do anything too drastic to me."

"Wonderful. I repeat, Naruto—_do not _trust its motives. I don't know what it's likely to try to do, but it is a malicious entity and it must resent its captivity. Be careful."

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, it's scary enough I'm not going to become close friends with it. But thanks, Kakashi-sensei."

Kakashi nodded and walked away, back towards Tazuna. Naruto sighed and turned back to his task. He was getting nowhere with attempts to pull harder on the boost—but Kakashi's interruption had given him an idea.

_Hey, fox! Are you hindering me trying to pull out the boost?_

The familiar feeling and voice was delayed, and seemed irritated. **I hinder nothing, whelp. You are having difficulties because you are demanding my chakra while you force it down at the same time. I would request that you stop.**

Naruto was taken aback. _It hurts you?_

The fox was churlish. **It is not pleasant.**

Naruto rubbed his head unconsciously. _Well, uh, sorry, I guess. How do I stop?_

He could not see the fox, and was far from certain that it could roll its eyes if he could—how could you roll eyes that were all you could see of a face? Regardless, the feeling he received was distinctly evocative of an eye-roll. **You began to attempt to force down my chakra while you fought with the Uchiha on the surface of the water. Stop doing that.**

The fox withdrew its presence within his mind, cutting off the conversation. Naruto shook his head. _Yeah...no risk of my trusting its motives too much._ He contemplated what the fox had said.

He replayed the second match with Sasuke in his head, the one when he had begun to attempt to hold back the fox's boost. What had he done? If the boost was like augmenting his strength with his own chakra, would holding it back be like suppressing it?

Thinking hard, he decided to try an experiment. Instead of pulling on the fox's chakra, he called up as much of his own as he could and tried to channel it into his muscles. As he stood and moved around, there was a difference, but only as much as he could usually get with chakra enhancement—nothing like the intoxicating, inhuman boost of the fox. He frowned and pushed more chakra into it—and when that was insufficient, more.

He did not see the blue haze forming around him. He did not see it thicken as he pushed more and more chakra into the rudimentary technique. He did not see the workers in their toils glancing at him aside and muttering in half-fear, half- bewilderment. He was only focused on his chakra.

As he pushed it further, feeling a drain now that ordinary techniques never caused, he felt something different. There was a barrier within him—with a door. And one that was now closed.

With a thought, he opened it, and pulled on the Kyuubi's boost as he had in his previous attempts. The workers who happened to be looking did not know what he was trying to do. They saw only the swirl of chakra around him, blue shading into red before it disappeared, and heard his yell of surprise.

The boost came over Naruto with more strength than he had yet before felt. He noted the drain on his own chakra disappearing with a sliver of his mind, but the majority felt only a shiver passing through his muscles like fire—he yelped in startlement—and then filling him with a furious, if oddly hyperactive, energy.

He suddenly felt the compulsive need to move. He ran over to Kakashi, where he stood near Tazuna. Tazuna, as most of the workers, was staring at Naruto, unsure of what to think. Kakashi looked over at him, stowing his omnipresent orange book behind his back. The sight was odd—Naruto looked just the same as normal, but he was running at a speed that should have been flatly impossible for him, and when he stopped standing before Kakashi it was with snakelike abruptness.

Kakashi made as if to speak, but Naruto spoke straight through him. "Hey! Kakashi-sensei! I think I've got a bit of this boost thing down! But now it's making me really want to move around!"

Kakashi was perhaps a moment slow in responding. "Interesting, Naruto. Can you turn it off?"

Naruto thought for a moment. "Maybe! I'll try!"

He looked down in his mind again at that door that had been closed. He had pulled on the Kyuubi's chakra to activate the boost, but now he was not exerting any effort; the flow continued on its own. The door, though...he tried to 'close' it the same way it had been 'opened', and felt the flow of chakra slacken. A similar effort again, and it slowed to a trickle, then stopped.

Naruto opened his eyes and looked around, then shook his head and staggered as the sudden change in his muscular capacity hit him.

"Wow, that...was really strange."

Black lines were sketched across the world. It took only a small effort to ignore them.

All the workers in sight were frozen, staring at him. Tazuna peered at him for a moment, then nodded and looked around.

"Hey! You lumps! I'm not paying you to gawk! Get working!"

There was a sudden flurry of movement as the workers hurriedly resumed their tasks.

* * *

Naruto stood carefully on the water. This was easier than it had been; he had practiced relentlessly until even with the Kyuubi's boost about half-active he could hold the wall-walking technique flawlessly, and apparently the improvement in his control transferred across exercises. He paced around for a few moments, feeling the difference—he could walk almost as usual now. But something eluded him. He frowned and looked around, seeing Sakura working out against Sasuke again some fifty yards away.

He ran over to them, only occasionally bobbling a step. "Hey! Sakura!"

The two stepped apart. Sasuke had apparently been training up his control as well; he was not as mobile as Sakura, yet, but enough that he was more-or-less dominating their match. Sakura looked over at him.

"What is it, Naruto?"

"How do you do the bit where you stand flat on the surface? I can't figure it out."

Sakura frowned. "You have to kind of feel around with your chakra. Like, lift your foot, then slowly bring it down, and focus on hardening the water right where it starts. It just takes more practice."

Naruto nodded. "Thanks."

Sasuke glanced over at him. "You figured out your problem yet, dobe?"

Naruto fidgeted. "I don't know. Maybe."

He opened the 'door' inside and drew on the Kyuubi's chakra again. This time, he brought it up slowly, focusing intently on both the Kyuubi's chakra in his muscles and his own chakra in his feet. It was difficult—even the slightest bit of boost tended to destabilize the technique. He held the boost at a tiny fraction of its potential, and worked on his feet. He was stable standing—could he walk?

A step later, he fell in.

Several tries later, he growled and walked back up the bridge to strip down again. Seriously, he had thought he was _over_ the whole soaking-himself- repeatedly thing.

It was a few more soakings still later—he had taken to practicing near the bridgeside, as opposed to out in the open water where Sasuke and Sakura were still sparring, because it was clear that he was not near being able to fight on the water while boosting—that he noticed it. Constantly using the boost had painted black lines on the world some time ago; it had been intermittent, to start with, but now that he was working with marginally higher boosts it was more or less permanent. Nothing had yet started falling apart, so he was comfortable ignoring them completely. It was a chance glance down that saw the seal on his stomach—constantly visible now; it showed up when he was working with chakra, which was why he hadn't noticed it in the past—amid the black lines the fox's vision put there. What startled him was the fact that there seemed to be a separate set of lines on the seal itself.

He called out to the fox—it was getting slightly disturbing how often he did that. _Hey, fox, what's with the lines on the seal? Can I kill seals with this thing?_

The same slightly disgruntled voice responded. **Yes. I would not recommend it at the moment. Cutting the lines of a seal disrupts it in unpredictable ways. We would most likely both die.**

Naruto sighed. _How stupid do you think I am? That's the thing that holds you inside me. I'm not going to try to destroy it._

The fox chuckled darkly. **Of course. Merely remember, should you ever need to disrupt a seal, that you do so best by stabbing it in its points.**

Naruto frowned. _What are these points you keep going on about?_

**You do not see them still? Odd. You really should advance the ability further. You need only ask.** This last was with a malicious laugh.

_No way! I'm not so eager to advance the ability that almost drove me insane three years ago._

**Your own weakness, WHELP.**

Naruto frowned and went back to the water-walking, trying to ignore the lines and the fox's words.

Yet more falls later, he decided to turn up the training aspect. Growling in frustration, he turned off the boost—he had never tried using techniques with it active, after all, and there was no point in inviting embarrassing mistakes—and crossed his hands. Several dozen clones appeared around him, all standing on the bridge wall, and they all stepped down onto the water's surface. Naruto followed suit, grinning at how easy it was. Apparently practicing under such a handicap had some advantages.

He had called out the half-boost that he was currently practicing under and managed to take three whole steps before falling before he noticed that the clones weren't doing anything. Hauling himself out of the water, he glared at the nearest one. "Hey, you slackers! What are you doing? Train!"

The clone glared straight back at him. "You idiot! We can't train this! Did it not occur to you that we don't have the Kyuubi sealed in us?" It promptly dispelled, and Naruto was hit with memories of determinedly drawing on a chakra source which wasn't there. _Great._

He waved dispiritedly at the rest of the clones, and they dispelled themselves as one. Naruto winced slightly at the influx of memory, but it wasn't nearly as bad as when a full fighting mob of a hundred did the same.

_No magic clone training for this one. Crud. Well, guess I've got to keep working._

* * *

Naruto stood across from Sasuke, again. He was still struggling to do water- walking properly while boosting, but he could tentatively use perhaps one- quarter boost, and Sasuke's idle challenge between his own bouts had given him an idea. He couldn't water-walk with the sort of boost the Kyuubi would give him when he fought Sasuke, but he had been practicing with the boost rather exhaustively. He just _might..._

Sakura signaled them to begin, and Sasuke lunged at him. Familiar energy flowed through him, this time not catalyzed by his own request, but by the Kyuubi. But now he understood it, and he could throttle it down.

He dodged Sasuke's first blow as he frantically forced the door in his mind closed. The boost left him, leaving him feeling slow, almost lethargic—but he could move. He dodged aside and around, hoping to catch Sasuke from behind as he passed, but that was an instinct from on land, when he could boost. Now, he was too slow. Sasuke whirled around and met his kick with a lightning-quick hook of one foot in a hand, following up by stepping in and throwing Naruto straight down.

_Crap. If I take a fall I drop straight through the surface and fall in. Wait...._

Naruto leaned to the side and, concentrating chakra in one hand, planted it on the surface. It stayed in position just as readily as his foot—in fact, more so; his hands were easier to mold the requisite chakra in. He kicked up with his still-grounded foot, ripping the one Sasuke still held from his grasp, and completed a cartwheel on the surface of the water to recover and fall into a crouch, grinning.

Sasuke stared fixedly at him for a moment, then raised an eyebrow and squared himself off against Naruto again.

"You're not as strong as you were, dobe."

Naruto sighed. "Yeah, turns out doing that shoots my chakra control all to Hell, so I have to turn it off on the water."

Sasuke nodded. "What is it that you're doing?"

"Sorry," said Naruto. "I really can't tell you."

Sasuke raised both eyebrows, this time, then charged at him again.

Over the next several minutes, Naruto was forcibly reminded that without the Kyuubi's boost, he was basically unable to defeat Sasuke in taijutsu.

* * *

Sparring on the water, and his training with the Kyuubi's boost, had taken up the entirety of the day. The day after, however, Naruto was pleasantly surprised at the near-instinctive nature of the exercise. He could walk just below the surface as easily as he could on the vertical stone of the bridgeside, and it took him only about an hour before he could reliably stand directly on the surface, as well. To his annoyance and Sasuke's smug appreciation, Sasuke was ready with the surface walking as soon as they arrived at the bridge that day, and Kakashi took him up to the top of the bridge to instruct him in something- or-other.

Once he thought he had the exercise down, Naruto immediately ran up the bridge and interrupted Kakashi. The jounin left Sasuke in charge of standing poker- faced behind Tazuna and followed him down the bridge. On determining that he had mastered water-walking to his satisfaction, Kakashi brought both Naruto and Sakura up to the bridge top and sat them down with Sasuke for another lecture.

"It looks like you've all gotten water-walking down. Sakura, you are to be congratulated on the speed with which you completed that." Sakura turned mildly pink and looked down, but she couldn't help a glance over at Sasuke, who was as usual uncommunicative. "Unfortunately, since you've all gotten it down, that's no longer a handicap that Sakura can use to practice with you. I don't trust you two to handicap yourselves enough that Sakura working with you on her taijutsu is more than an exercise in frustration for her. So..." Kakashi seemingly mused for a moment, but if he was acting as usual, Naruto thought with sour respect, he had already thought this out beforehand over the course of days and knew precisely what he was about to say and the three most likely contingencies. "Let's do this," he continued, and made a very familiar hand seal. Three copies of him popped into existence next to him—Tazuna, a few feet ahead, jumped, looked around, then dismissed it and turned back to his work—and one moved towards each genin. "I'll stay here and guard Tazuna. You each get training from a clone. If, by whatever means you've been trained in, you manage to disrupt my clone—when it's ready and invited you to try, mind—I'll deem you to have passed this bit and you can come back to me. This will probably be the last thing I actually teach you during this interlude; we only have a few days left until Zabuza will be healthy enough to attack, and I can't imagine him waiting too long after that. For that matter, there's only another two weeks until the bridge is finished. Something has to give before then, so be wary. Understood?"

"Got it, sensei," said Naruto. The other two restricted themselves to nods. Then their respective clones of Kakashi moved, and the genin followed them back along the bridge to open ground.

* * *

Naruto followed his clone to a length of bridge beyond the stacked construction supplies, where it stopped and waited for him. It (he?) was silent for some time, enough for Naruto to start wondering if the clone was broken somehow, but then it (he?) spoke.

"Naruto, create just one shadow clone, please."

Naruto nodded and formed the cross handsign. Three clones popped into existence in front of him. He scowled, and dispelled them. The clone of Kakashi raised his visible eyebrow.

"Try again. You shouldn't have a problem with this, especially after all that control training."

Naruto crossed his hands again, feeding the technique less chakra this time, and one clone appeared. Kakashi's clone nodded.

"Good job. Now, you should know _kawarimi no jutsu_ , correct?"

Naruto nodded, put out. What was Kakashi asking him? That was a basic Academy jutsu. Wasn't he going to learn something awesome?

Kakashi—the clone— _whatever_ , Naruto chose simply to think of him as Kakashi—smiled. "Good. I want you to exchange places with your clone right now."

Naruto made five hand signs, stopping on Snake. A puff of smoke surrounded him and his clone, but there was no other visible change. Kakashi looked at him, then without a word punched the one of the two standing where the original had been. It disappeared in a pop.

The original Naruto turned to Kakashi with a glare. "What was that for?"

Kakashi grinned under the mask. "I had to tell if you'd done it properly, neh?"

Naruto rolled his eyes. "So what am I learning?"

"I'd like you to keep practicing kawarimi until you get it so that you can do it without any hand seals."

Naruto's eyes widened. "What? Isn't that really really advanced? And what good does it do me, anyway?"

"To answer your questions. Yes, usually, but kawarimi is such a simple technique that you should be able to do it in a few days. And I'll tell you once you've got it." Kakashi smiled beatifically.

Naruto grumbled at him for a moment, then looked up again. "How do I do it? Like, do I start with trying to do it in four seals, or what?"

"Yes. Just do the technique over and over, and you'll get to a point where it feels like the chakra is moving on its own. Not being filtered through the hand seals. You understand?"

"Yeah, I guess...."

"So when you have that feeling, you can try to cut out a seal or two. Usually it's easiest to remove the ones in the middle of the sequence. When someone is training like this for something with very many seals, like that _suiryudan_ I used against Zabuza, they might take out five seals at once, but for this one you should just do one. Then if it works, do that over and over until you get the same feeling."

Naruto nodded, looking slightly dubious. "All right..."

He crossed his hands again and focused his chakra, then thought better of it and aborted the technique. "Kakashi-sensei? Is there a place where there's more room?"

Kakashi had raised his eyebrow. "How much space do you need for kawarimi training?"

"Well, I'm going to do a bunch of clones to train faster."

Kakashi's eyebrow lifted further. "Is that so?" He chuckled softly. "Well, I suppose it makes sense. Most people don't bother."

The clone of Kakashi beckoned him along as he went further along the bridge. Naruto followed, his brow wrinkled in confusion. "Why not?"

Kakashi looked back over his shoulder as he led. "Most people who know _kage bunshin_ at all can only do a few clones. The vast majority can do fewer than ten. And the benefit from training with clones is not really that big—training with two clones doesn't give you twice the training, it's only a tiny advantage. You need fifty or so before it becomes noticeable. I could, maybe, create fifty, if I was fresh, but it would give me a case of chakra exhaustion at least as bad as I had after fighting Zabuza. Not really worth it for the purpose of training."

Naruto nodded slowly, absorbing the information, then grinned. "Hey, cool! So I have more chakra than you?"

The clone of Kakashi rolled his eyes. "Yes, gaki, you do. Don't let it get to your head, unless you think you could beat me."

Naruto gulped. "No, sensei."

Kakashi smiled brightly. "Good!"

There was silence for a minute or so—Kakashi was angling towards a large, empty stretch of shore—before Naruto spoke again. "So, sensei—why do I have so much chakra? Is it because of, uh, you know?"

Kakashi nodded. "So far as we can determine. It's not a phenomenon we know all that much about."

Naruto nodded quietly. Then another question: "But I can do a whole lot of shadow clones even when I don't pull on the fox's chakra. Why's that?"

The clone of Kakashi turned sharply to look at him. "You can use the Kyuubi's chakra to fuel a technique?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. I tried it when I was tree walking, and it kind of exploded the tree."

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "It would. Well...be careful with it, and if you're uncertain about anything, ask me what to do. I should at least be able to keep you from killing yourself."

Naruto was silent for a moment before replying, more quietly than usual. "Thanks, sensei."

Kakashi remained silent too, for almost a minute. It was...difficult, seeing how the boy reacted to even the slightest and most expected kindness. In the end, though, there was still a task to be completed.

"Naruto! Don't you have training to do?"

The boy nodded, shaking off his seeming depression, and crossed his hands in his favorite seal. Almost two hundred clones popped up, the smoke that appeared making a light haze for a moment before dispersing in the steady breeze off the sea. In a clamor of motion, they formed up in two lines, and each copy in one of them selected one in the other to target. Within seconds, most of the clones were practicing the kawarimi, and the light pops and puffs of smoke produced by successful attempts filled the area.

* * *

The clone of Kakashi had taken out the usual bright orange book—created, like all his other equipment, by the shadow clone technique, but just as entertaining nonetheless—and was standing off to one side of the area where Naruto's clones were practicing. He kept one eye on the boy—boys? Clones always introduced a bit of uncertainty into the usual conventions of grammar—while he read, and to his eye it appeared that he was improving at a decent enough rate, though not nearly as quickly as Sakura or Sasuke would have. Well, it was to be expected. Sakura was incredibly good at chakra control, and Sasuke had not been Rookie of the Year or called 'genius' for nothing. After half an hour of practice, at least several hundred repetitions of the exercise per clone, the telltale smoke of an imperfectly controlled technique had only diminished slightly. At this rate, it would probably take the boy all day to remove even one seal. Well, good. It would teach him patience.

Speaking of which, one Naruto—probably the original, judging by his actions—broke off from the practice, scowling, and made a hand seal. All the clones disappeared in puffs of smoke, and the original yelped and clapped his hands over his eyes. He rubbed his temples with a groan, his head bowed. Kakashi smirked behind his mask. Such were the wages of memory overload—and it was refreshing to see that the boy's startling grasp of such an advanced technique was not perfect. His earlier words otherwise, Naruto's ability with shadow clones had occasionally left Kakashi feeling rather...feeble.

Naruto straightened up, grumbling mildly, and crossed his hands again. A single clone popped into existence, this one with almost no smoke at all. _Makes sense. He keeps getting practice. _Then, the original went through the same five hand seals that the whole mob had been using earlier—but there was a difference. His motion was not that of one using a basically unfamiliar technique, creating the chain of seals on the fly. It was fast, very fast, and practiced—the motion of one who had practiced the same technique over and over to perfection. _Which also makes sense. He only just got the benefit of all the clone training._ What was more surprising was the technique itself. It was almost silent—Kakashi, from his somewhat-distant vantage point, could only just hear the sound—and the associated smoke had been cut to a third, at most, of what it had been.

Naruto could obviously tell that there was a difference. He turned to Kakashi with a frown, shouting over the small distance. "Hey! Kakashi-sensei! It's not making as much smoke anymore! What does that mean?"

Kakashi did not speak nearly as loudly as Naruto had—it really wasn't required. "It means your control over the technique is increasing, Naruto. That's one sign that you're ready to cut signs out, when the smoke is not noticeable."

Naruto grinned. "Hey, cool! I bet I get a sign out in another hour!" He crossed his hands again and made another huge mob of clones, who all began practicing again. This time, they all ran through the seals with the same instinctive ease, and all of them had the same much-increased control.

_Interesting. I wouldn't be surprised if he did it. I'd expected it to take him all day._

The clone went back to his book.

* * *

The three genin gathered back with the original Kakashi and Tazuna as they went home. Sasuke was looking marginally more smug than usual. Naruto came up next to him and jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. The Uchiha glanced over at him with mild annoyance.

"Hey, teme! What did you learn?"

In lieu of an answer, Sasuke raised his hands in a ram seal. In a flash too fast to see, he was suddenly on Naruto's other side. Naruto grinned broadly. "_Shunshin! _Nice! I've always wanted to learn that!" It was one of the more iconic ninja techniques, their habit of instantaneously appearing and disappearing wherever was convenient.

Sasuke raised one eyebrow a fraction. "Indeed. Yourself?"

Naruto grinned and did a _kawarimi—_with Sasuke. It took him only three seals; Kakashi's clone had said that this was unexpectedly quick progress. The black- haired genin stumbled slightly, and turned to give Naruto a dark look. To his target's immense amusement, he first looked the wrong way, in the direction that Naruto had been before the replacement, before whipping around to his actual location.

Naruto laced his fingers behind his head and grinned broadly. Sasuke kept up his glare for only a moment before shaking his head with a roll of his eyes and turning his gaze back forwards.

Sakura had been looking rather hopeful throughout this exchange; when it finished, she maintained the look for a moment before her face fell. Naruto probably did not notice this, being Naruto, but for whatever reason, several seconds after his exchange with Sasuke, he glanced over at her.

"What about you, Sakura?"

Sakura almost jumped. "Uh...ah! Oh, Kakashi-sensei had me working on trying to mix genjutsu in with my taijutsu. It only works if I can cast the genjutsu beforehand, but if I can do that, then it really helps me out."

Naruto nodded. "Cool, I guess. I just don't get genjutsu."

Sasuke glanced at her measuringly out of the corner of his eye. "Hn."

* * *

They gathered by the bridge again the next morning. Kakashi, as before, made three shadow clones and sent one of them off with each of them. Naruto followed his clone with rather significantly less enthusiasm than he had had the day before; he was anticipating only the same thing as yesterday, and while he supposed it was cool to practice any technique to the point where he could do it without a single seal, Kakashi had still not made entirely clear what the sealless kawarimi was _good _for.

That day was taken up almost in its entirety by tedious repetitions of kawarimi, followed by intervals of annoying headache while he integrated the memories of the clones he used to train. Infuriatingly enough, he made progress nowhere near as quickly as he had the day before; his clone of Kakashi, which he noted grumpily did _nothing at all_ but sit around within his eyeshot and read his book, occasionally answering a question, noted that the more seals had already been removed from a technique, the more chakra control work was being done by the mind alone, and so the more time it took to master it enough to remove another seal. Even with the entire day to work with, he only managed to cut off two more seals. He could now do a passable kawarimi with only a single ram seal. The greatest frustration came from the fact that, after working long and hard to cut out a single seal and getting the technique almost silent and smokeless, once he cut that seal out it went straight back to making a pop like an uncorked wine bottle and a very noticeable puff of smoke. Naruto was not noted for being particularly cognizant of, well, much of anything, unless it related to a prank or (lately) some bit of fuinjutsu, but he could easily understand that a technique that was loud and visually noticeable was not nearly as useful in battle.

Naruto was not in nearly as good a mood that evening as he had been the day before. Kakashi apparently noticed this, because the next day, instead of sending him off with a clone to drill that last hand seal out of him, he created only two clones and motioned Naruto to stay with him.

"Ma, Naruto, it seems you are getting less than enthusiastic about your special training, ne?"

Naruto fidgeted and rubbed the back of his head. "Uh...sorry, sensei. It's just kind of boring."

Kakashi smiled at him. "You're right! It's _very_ boring. So instead, today I'm going to show you some things."

He produced two shadow clones, and all three of him walked over to stand in a line in front of Naruto. Tazuna, who was, as usual, in the middle of the controlled chaos of the bridge-building effort, glanced over at the absence of Kakashi, but was apparently unconcerned.

All three of Kakashi spoke at once, creating a rather disturbing effect. "Naruto, we're going to play a game. You're going to fight the three of us." Naruto shuddered, and all three Kakashis, acting as one, raised a hand in reassurance. "We won't attack you at all, and use as little defense as we can. Your job is to pop just one of the two clones. If you do that, you win the game."

Naruto nodded, grinning. "Just one? Piece of cake!" He did not add that he expected it to be easy only because Kakashi was holding back on him; after his performance during the bell test, Naruto did not doubt that a single shadow clone of Kakashi could easily beat him into the ground, and he'd only land a disrupting blow if the clone let him.

All three of Kakashi grinned, but they did not move into any sort of stance; they remained upright, with hands by their sides. "You can start."

Naruto charged at the leftmost Kakashi, which, if he recalled correctly, was one of the clones. He was very surprised when his first punch went home. He was just as surprised when, instead of disrupting a clone, it thudded into the stomach of, apparently, the real Kakashi. The jounin did not make any sign that he had just been hit by a relatively strong blow to the stomach, but ignored Naruto completely.

Naruto growled and slammed a punch up at the face of the next Kakashi over in line. Again, there was no defense. His target's head snapped back, but he again made no other sign. And again, it was not a clone, but apparently the real Kakashi.

_What the hell? Has he made some sort of enduring clone?_ _It can't be—that would be an insane technique._

Naruto went into an annoyed flurry of blows aimed at all three of the doppelgangers. The same thing happened every time—whenever a punch landed, it was on the real Kakashi. He must have been hurting to a degree by now, having taken all the punches without the slightest block or defense, but he looked entirely as before.

Naruto backed off for a moment, then charged again. This time, he aimed a spinning kick at one of the three, timed to coincide with a punch to the face of another. The punch landed as always, Kakashi's head snapping back but no other reaction forthcoming. The clone in the path of the kick, however, took a single step back to dodge—the first time any of them had moved in the slightest, except to resume their upright position after a strike. Naruto disengaged with a look of disbelief.

"You're doing Kawarimi! Without any seals, and it's not even noticeable!"

The Kakashi on the left grinned, and the other two dispersed.

"Good job, Naruto! You figured it out."

Naruto scowled at him. "So what good is that? Why would I want to let people beat _me _up instead of my clones?"

Kakashi shrugged. "Is there anything that you can do that your clones can't?"

Naruto frowned. "Yeah, actually. That, uh, boost, that uses the furball, the clones can't do."

"Well, then. If you can swap out with any clone instantly, then you can use boosted attacks wherever it's most convenient without needing to bother about moving. Also, a quick sealless kawarimi can save your bacon in some situations. Remember during the bell test when you grabbed me?"

Naruto grinned slowly at some realization. "Oh, that could be useful. I could swap my opponents into attacks, maybe?"

Kakashi shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. When someone's off guard, you can, but if someone's in combat or alert then their own chakra resists the technique. I forced it on Sasuke because I have so much more chakra than he does, during that fight, but usually you won't be able to do that unless your opponent is so weak that you don't need to. You can do it to civilians, probably."

Naruto frowned. "Are you sure? I could do it to Sasuke, when I tried it."

Kakashi shook his head. "He was probably relaxed enough that it didn't kick in. Here, try it on me now. I'm holding my guard down."

Naruto made a single ram seal, and he switched places with Kakashi. Turning around, Kakashi nodded. "Now try it when I'm prepared."

Naruto tried the technique again. This time, it failed—he could feel it fail, and nothing happened. But something was familiar about the feeling. What was it?

He frowned as Kakashi went on about something else, but he wasn't listening. He was sorting through his memories, trying to find out why the feeling of his failed kawarimi was familiar. Then he had it—it was like when he was tree- walking, and throttled his chakra down to levels insufficient to maintain the technique. He wasn't using enough chakra.

Kakashi had stopped, probably waiting for him to say something. He had no idea what his teacher had been saying, but he was thinking of something else. "Kakashi-sensei? Could I try doing that kawarimi on you again, when you were prepared?"

Kakashi looked momentarily taken aback, but agreed. "All right, but you won't be able to do it. Are you just trying to get the feeling?"

"Kind of," Naruto muttered, reaching for his chakra. He called up more than he had been using for kawarimi—much more. It was still barely a drain.

Kakashi nodded at him, and he formed a ram seal. "Kawarimi no jutsu!" he muttered—the verbalization was technically unnecessary, but it was a useful mnemonic for the chakra manipulation, and he wanted all the advantages he could get. Then he poured a huge amount of chakra into the technique, focusing tightly on controlling it.

His control was abysmal, that time. There was a noise that was almost loud, and the puff of smoke that manifested was thicker even than usual. The important thing, though, was that he had successfully swapped with Kakashi.

The jounin spun around, his visible eye wide, and bit down a harsh question. He sighed. "Of course. You do have more chakra than approximately the rest of the village combined," he muttered. Hopefully too quietly for Naruto to hear. All the kami knew what that would do to his ego.

Naruto was grinning, his hands laced behind his head as he did after some minor triumph. Kakashi sighed. "Congratulations, Naruto! I wouldn't have thought you had the control to overload a technique like that and have it still happen. I recommend not doing it too often. It imbues you with bad habits."

Naruto looked hurt. "Ne, sensei, what about the technique? I could use that really well, I bet."

Kakashi shrugged. "On occasion, maybe, and it's a useful thing to have. But that took more concentration than you're used to, I imagine?"

Naruto nodded.

"So it's not so great for doing in combat, if it takes a few seconds. You could fix that with practice, but it's not a good idea to practice overloading too much. It'll make your control less good on the plain kawarimi, which is more useful."

Naruto made an expression which might almost have been called a pout, on a younger child; on him, it didn't _quite_ merit that name, but simply looked ridiculous. "Aw..."

Kakashi raised his one eyebrow. "It's still a useful technique to have in some situations, Naruto. It's simply not something you can really make part of your fighting style, the way you can the usual kawarimi."

Naruto frowned. "Drat. Oh well."

Kakashi smiled brightly and walked towards Naruto. "So! Since you have it down to a single seal, getting it completely sealless is just a matter of practice. So instead, we're going to work more on your control of the technique."

Naruto looked up at him dubiously. "How are we going to do that, sensei?"

"You're going to do the same practice you've been doing. But this time, you're going to do it while water walking."

Naruto groaned.

* * *

Sasuke followed helplessly along in Naruto's wake as he dragged him out to a familiar-looking spot in the forest. He wondered for a moment where he was, before the sight of a very familiar destroyed tree-trunk reminded him: this was where they had learned tree-walking. How long ago? It couldn't have been more than a week. The constant training made it feel like much longer.

Naruto had grabbed him around the wrist as soon as Kakashi had released them from training that day. They had reached the house quite some time before Tsunami had dinner prepared; on hearing that there were a few hours free, Naruto had become very active. Sasuke was simply following along, for the moment; hopefully the blond would eventually explain what the _hell _he was doing.

They reached the clearing where Kakashi had given them the tree-walking demonstration. Naruto _finally _let go of his wrist and turned to face him.

"Sasuke, could you teach me the shunshin?"

Sasuke looked at him flatly and crossed his arms. "Dobe, I just learned that from Kakashi. And it's not an easy technique to learn."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Then why does every other ninja in the five nations know it except me?"

Sasuke sighed. "They don't, dobe. Sakura doesn't. I didn't, until two days ago. I'm pretty sure none of the other genin from our class this year do."

Naruto looked at him pleadingly. "Come on! I want to learn it!"

"I'm not sure you could. You know anything about layered techniques?"

Naruto nodded quickly. "Yeah! The shadow clones are one. It's, like, something starting with horse under that one special hand sign."

Sasuke looked at him in surprise. Layered techniques required the user to mold chakra in a form expressed by a secondary string of seals, underneath the molding formed by the few primary seals. They were difficult to learn, but allowed a short-cut to using a given technique in only one or two seals that was easier than exhaustively training a normal technique down. He wouldn't have expected Naruto to know—well, scratch that, he would expect Naruto to _know _about them, given the perverse pleasure he seemed to take in reading any bits and trivia about ninjutsu he could find. He wouldn't have expected Naruto to be able to do one. Chakra control was hardly his forte.

"Interesting...I'm still not sure you could."

"Let me try, anyway! Please, Sasuke? I'll teach you shadow clones."

"Shadow clones?"

"Yeah! It takes a lot of chakra, but you manage that weird fireball thingy, I think you could do two or three. It's really useful."

Sasuke scoffed. "Two or three? I think I could manage more than that. You can do five hundred."

Naruto grinned. "Won't know until you try."

Sasuke sighed. "All right. I'll teach you the layer sequence, anyway. You have to figure out doing it."

Naruto grinned even more broadly than before. "Hey, thanks!"

* * *

Sasuke ran through the layer sequence for _kage bunshin_ one more time, feeding the seals just the slightest amount of chakra, and memorized the feeling of the shape. Then, he gathered together all the chakra he felt like putting into a test run of an unfamiliar technique—more than he usually would have; Naruto's warning had peeved him, and he was eager to prove the blond's assessment of his chakra capacity incorrect. The molding he ran through was of the sequence he had memorized earlier; but the seal his hands formed was unfamiliar, two fingers on each hand formed in a cross, and he forced his chakra to follow both paths at once as he fed it to the technique.

Then it took on life and began draining him. Sasuke almost panicked, almost aborted the technique, for he had already fed in as much chakra as he wanted to expend, but he persevered. It took three seconds, and by the end Sasuke was about to abort anyway, afraid that it would eat all his energy, but then the technique cut itself off with finality. A swirl of chakra ran through the clearing, and there was a puff of smoke. When it cleared, Sasuke saw two perfect clones of himself standing across from him. He himself fell down into a low crouch, winded and breathing hard. That was the furthest he'd pushed himself since first training the _Gokakyu no Jutsu_ when he was seven.

He looked back across the clearing at the two clones. Two of them.

"Two," he said, in a tired voice. "Two of them, and that was the most chakra I think I've ever used on anything." He looked at Naruto, who was standing to one side, grinning broadly. "How in Heaven, Hell and Earth are you able to make _five hundred_?"

Naruto grinned sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. "Well, if I really push it it's more like a thousand."

" _That's even worse. _Why the _Hell_ do you have so much chakra?"

Naruto sighed, becoming visibly less cheerful. "Just lucky, I guess."

Sasuke looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then shook his head.

"Hey, taichou, look on the bright side," said a voice which was—not surprisingly—completely identical to his own. "Now that there's three of us, the world can't help but acknowledge how awesome we are." The tone was dry.

Sasuke looked at the clone who had spoken in blank surprise, then back at Naruto.

"Why are they calling me _captain_?"

Naruto shrugged. "I dunno. Mine just call me Boss. You must be an inherently more formal person." He grinned at him.

Sasuke shook his head wearily. He looked at the clones. "Greetings, um, loyal subordinates who happen to be identical copies of me."

The same clone from before spoke again. "Greetings, oh captain, who actually has bodily integrity."

He looked sideways at Naruto. "How do I end the technique?"

The other clone spoke for the first time. "No dispersal needed." Both clones popped into smoke, and Sasuke shook his head at the mild rush of memory.

He looked at Naruto. "I gave you the layer sequence for shunshin. Did you actually try it?"

Naruto shook his head, grinning. "Nah, I can do that tomorrow. This trip was worth it just seeing your expression when you only got two clones."

Sasuke shook his head. "Dobe."

"Teme."

Sasuke pushed himself back to his feet. "We going to head back?" The night was growing somewhat darker, and the flutterings overhead were those of bats' wings, rather than birds'.

Naruto was not moving. "You know, I just remembered something."

He was silent and still for another few moments. Sasuke waved a hand in front of his face. "Naruto? Are you still conscious?"

Naruto shook it off. "Yeah, I am. Listen, I wanted to try this out, and I need to be a ways away from the house. I'll be back right soon."

Sasuke shook his head. "I want to see what _you _think is destructive or disruptive enough to need to be done away from the house. I'll wait."

"All right." Naruto made a single clone, which stood in the middle of the clearing. He grabbed Sasuke's arm and dragged him back into the trees surrounding it, the clone just visible through the gaps in the trees. "I had this idea right after I learned shadow clones, but I could never get it to work with my chakra control. It always just destroyed the clone. I'm hoping that with all that training I can get it right."

"All right...what is it supposed to do?"

"You'll see. Just, uh, watch?" Naruto sounded almost surprised himself at this last; he indicated the clone, which was making a hand seal. Sasuke took a step to the side to see better.

"Dobe, what hand seal is that? It looks like some sort of very bastardized horse."

Naruto was muttering to himself. "Yeah, that makes sense...yeah. Yeah, that's probably what it is." He duplicated the clone's movement with his own hands—it did look like a horse seal, made by someone with some horrible congenital defect in their fingers. Sasuke was at a loss to guess what it might do.

The clone stopped making his odd seal and waved at Naruto. "Trying it now!" it yelled, and Naruto nodded back.

"Watch," he whispered.

The clone made that odd horse seal again, and closed its eyes. It appeared to be concentrating its chakra, and sure enough, a moment later a thin blue haze formed around it. Sasuke stared at it. It took most of his chakra to produce that sort of effect when he molded it; did Naruto's _clones_ have that much? That was rather frightening.

Then it exploded.

Sasuke became aware of a blinding light and a burning heat on his face a fraction of a second before a giant's fist hit him everywhere at once and flung him backwards. Something terrible happened to his ears at about the same time. He became incoherent for a moment; when he was aware again, he was lying on his back on the forest floor some ten feet behind where he had stood. The sky was glowing, for some reason. Why was the sky glowing?

The sky wasn't glowing anymore. Why had he thought the sky was glowing?

He thought he might get up, at some point. Something was happening to his ears. What was with his ears?

There was no sound. Or, well, there was constant, insanely loud roaring, but he was pretty sure that was his imagination. There wasn't a waterfall around here, was there? Or a tornado?

He sat up. This seemed like a good idea. Looking back and forth, out of habit. Orange. Where? There.

That was Naruto. He had already stood up, but he was bent over laughing. At least, it looked as if he were laughing. Sasuke had never seen anyone laugh completely silently before. Or, alternatively, laugh in a way that sounded precisely like a tornado.

Sasuke stood up. The malignant tornado besieging his ears had backed off a bit. Naruto was still laughing. He walked over to him and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him up to vertical again.

Naruto kept laughing, but it was slowing down. Sasuke waited patiently for almost two whole seconds before poking Naruto in the ribs and gesturing emphatically at his ears. Naruto, grinning, nodded earnestly and pointed at his ears as well.

_Great. Him too._

_Are you planning on doing that again?_ he said, loudly. It still didn't manage to overcome the metaphorical tornado, but Naruto appeared to get the gist of his question. He shook his head.

Giving up on words, Sasuke rolled his eyes and pointed back in the direction of Tazuna's house. Naruto nodded, still occasionally seized by fits of laughter. Together, the two walked off towards their client's home.

* * *

Naruto could hear again by the time they reached the house, and he assumed Sasuke could as well, but it appeared that the period in which the Uchiha would have felt compelled to say things like _Do you realize what you just did?_ , _Are you planning on doing it again?_ , and _What is your vendetta against the poor innocent trees of Wave?_ had passed while both were deaf. Now Sasuke walked beside him with his hands by his sides as usual. He said absolutely nothing, which was also not unexpected.

They were almost home by the time Sasuke spoke.

"That's the perfect technique for you, you know."

Naruto grinned broadly. "Isn't it just? It's like the most ridiculously destructive thing I've ever seen!"

Sasuke continued as if he had not heard. "Involves clones, complete lack of subtlety, constitutes a grievous assault on both the ears and eyes simply by existing...."

Naruto growled in mock anger and poked him in the ribs. Sasuke's control finally broke, and he bent over laughing helplessly.

It was almost another minute before they kept moving. They were almost in the door when Naruto said, "So what happens if I use _two _clones?"

For some reason, this made both of them start laughing again. They were still chuckling as they walked in the door. Kakashi and Tsunami, both in the kitchen, looked up; Sakura poked her head in from behind a wall. The most immediate reaction, though, came from Tsunami's son—what was his name again? Inari, wasn't it?—who was sitting at the table.

"Shut up!"

Naruto blinked at him. The boy had been skulking around as a mildly gloomy sort of presence all the while that they had been here; he seemed to take whatever opportunity was available to glare at the shinobi in his house. They had been so busy training, however, that their actual contact with Inari had been limited.

"Uh, Inari, what's—" Naruto ventured, but Inari cut him off.

"Just shut up! You come in here thinking you're going to go against Gatou, you think you're stronger than everyone else, and you go around laughing—shut up! Don't you get that you're going to die?"

Naruto and Sasuke exchanged looks.

"Hey, Sasuke, he thinks we're going to die. Do you think we're going to die?"

Sasuke shot him a slight grin. "Anyone who gets in the way of that new technique of yours is going to die. We just have to make sure that's _not us_."

"Right! Sounds like a sound operational plan. Let's make that the new doctrine: Operation Stay Out of the Blast Radius."

The joking banter infuriated Inari further. "Shut up! You people keep _laughing_ about it! You don't know what it's like to lose things!"

The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees in an instant. Naruto stared at Inari with a look of genuine dislike, but the frightened looks from Inari, Tsunami and Sakura were not directed at him. He glanced to the side, to see Sasuke glaring at Inari with hatred. His face was twisted, and his fists were clenched and trembling by his sides. His legs tensed up, setting off alarm bells in Naruto's mind.

Naruto grabbed Sasuke's arm and spoke urgently in his ear. "Sasuke! Try to refrain from killing the kid. He doesn't know what he's talking about."

Sasuke took a step forwards, his face set, yanking his arm out of Naruto's grasp. "You're _damned_ right he doesn't."

Naruto looked back and forth between his friend and Inari, wincing at the look on the latter's face. Sasuke was focusing killing intent—he had to be, to have that effect on Inari. It wouldn't have touched even an Academy student, but for a young civilian boy....

Sasuke took another step forward, and Naruto grabbed his arm again. "Sasuke! Client! Can't get paid to protect if we kill! Remember?"

Sasuke spoke in the same flat voice. "The kid isn't the client."

Naruto clenched his jaw, and holding Sasuke by the wrist, yanked him towards the door. He opened it and pushed him through, the tension starting to bleed out of the room. Naruto glanced back at Inari, who was petrified.

"Kid, that was the wrong thing to say to me, but it was _definitely_ the wrong thing to say to Sasuke."

And he disappeared out the door.

Sasuke was standing stock still, his jaw still clenched tight. Then, as Naruto watched, he took a deep breath and relaxed with a conscious effort. Naruto sighed.

"Sasuke, the kid's just being a brat. He had no idea what that meant."

Sasuke spoke slightly more normally, but he was still dreadfully angry. "I know."

Naruto sighed. "Maybe best not go in there again until things have calmed down. And..."

He debated this next part, but decided to go through with it. "You should apologize to Tsunami-san. I think you scared her pretty badly there."

Sasuke let out an explosive breath. "You're right. I should. I'll do it tomorrow. I'm going somewhere. Don't follow me."

He jumped up to the roof of the house, then to a tree branch, and disappeared quickly away.

Naruto looked after him with a sigh. He really didn't feel like going back in either. With a snort of frustration, he trudged off into the forest. There went dinner...and probably sleep, as well.

* * *

Naruto woke early. He was sprawled on the forest floor between two roots of a huge, old tree, one of the several surrounding the clearing where they had practiced. Looking up, he saw several low branches snapped off and hanging, the fruits of his explosive clone, which he hadn't noticed the night before. He winced.

"Sorry, tree-san," he muttered, feeling silly. Then he thought to take stock of what had woken him up.

Someone was in the clearing with him. The person was facing away, bending down, apparently searching the ground for something. Naruto stood up and approached uncertainly.

"Uh...hello? Are you looking for something?"

The figure rose and turned smoothly, revealing...well, it was either a girl, or a _very_effeminate boy. She (he?) spoke. "No, I was just gathering plants. I think I'm finished now."

Naruto nodded, and stumbled over his next question. "W-what are the plants for?"

The girl (boy? Yeah, Naruto just decided she was a girl) smiled. "They make a special ointment, which I can use to help heal someone who is precious to me."

Naruto smiled. "Cool! That's good. Uh, that you do that."

The girl looked at him thoughtfully. "What is your name?"

Naruto looked startled. "Oh! Uzumaki Naruto. Uh...what's yours?"

She smiled. "My name is Haku."

"Thank you." Naruto grinned.

There was silence for a moment. Naruto really wasn't sure what to say, but Haku seemed entirely satisfied to stand there and stare at him. He was just beginning to contemplate leaving when she spoke again.

"Is there anyone precious to you?"

Images of his team, of Sasuke's superior smirk, Kakashi's raised eyebrow, flickered through him. He remembered Hinata smiling at him when she learned he had graduated, and a smile came to his face. "Yeah. Yeah, there is."

She looked at him more closely. "Who is it?"

"Uh, there's my teammates, and my teacher, and...my friends." He sighed.

Haku sighed, and there was an air of sadness in her voice. "What would you do, to protect those who are precious to you?"

Hinata's smile filled Naruto's mind, and he replied with conviction. "Anything."

Haku smiled, but the air of sadness did not leave her. "I would as well." She turned and began to walk away, but looked back at him. "I hope you are able to protect your precious people, Naruto-kun." She turned away, but one last aside floated over her shoulder. "Oh, and if there was any confusion, I am a boy."

* * *

Naruto eventually walked back to Tazuna's house, where he caught Tsunami just getting up. She looked at him with concern.

"Naruto-kun? Are you all right?"

He waved her off. "I'm fine."

She turned off the faucet where she was washing her hands, and sighed. "I'm sorry about Inari. He's...had a bad time. My husband, who wasn't his father but who he really idolized, was killed by Gatou...a long time ago."

Naruto nodded. "It wasn't his fault. He just hit a bad spot, on both Sasuke and me. More Sasuke than me, obviously. Did Kakashi tell you anything?"

She hesitated. "Not me...I think he spoke to Inari, though."

Naruto sighed. "I hope so. I guess Sasuke didn't come in last night?"

Tsunami shook her head.

"Well, he can take care of himself. He should come in soon."

Tsunami nodded uncertainly and busied herself with breakfast.

* * *

Sasuke came in just as breakfast was being served. Inari, when he saw him, flinched away from him, but stared at him almost in fascination. Sasuke looked at Inari with mere disdain, but his apology to Tsunami was apparently sincere and the most humble Naruto had ever seen the Uchiha. He supposed that the fact that he apologized in Inari's presence was a sort of oblique peace offering to the boy.

The day's work went smoothly. Naruto trained in the kawarimi until he grew incredibly bored, but apparently the last seal was more difficult to internalize than the others. In the increments, with his assigned Kakashi-clone's permission, he worked on the shunshin, but was unable to successfully work it before the day was over.

It was the day afterward when they arrived at the bridge to find the stacked materials pushed aside or tumbled into the sea, and the workers lying unconscious or dead around the feet of two masked ninja.


	8. Eyes

Team Seven stopped as one, instantly prepared for battle. Tazuna, walking along behind, did not notice the carnage until a moment later. He almost walked into Kakashi before freezing with a gasp.

"Wha-what's going on here? What happened to my workers?" He looked straight at the two assailants and recognized Zabuza; his face froze.

Kakashi spoke without turning. "Tazuna-san, these are the ninja that attacked you on the path to your home. The one in the mask is a secret ally of Zabuza."

Zabuza chuckled, his voice seeming to echo around the bridge. "I commend you on your skills of deduction, Sharingan no Kakashi. You've no doubt guessed our purpose."

Kakashi replied. "There's not that much to guess. I suppose you're after Tazuna, again?"

"Indeed. But I understand perfectly well that I won't get him without going through you first." Zabuza chuckled again, and made a tiny gesture, just barely visible over the distance between them.

Eight copies of the Mist nukenin burst over the sides of the bridge, four on each side. Kakashi glanced briefly to both sides, and made as if to crouch and leap, but Sasuke acted first. He grabbed kunai from the holsters on both sides of his legs and, with a single convulsive motion, flung them. All eight clones collapsed into puddles of water, making a light shower of rain down upon and around the team.

Sasuke smirked. "Hn. That was easy."

Naruto jabbed him in the ribs from beside him. "Show-off."

"What? It was. Well, what it was was a waste of perfectly good kunai. They all fell off in the ocean somewhere."

Naruto rolled his eyes and grabbed one of the scrolls from the holder by his side. "You want kunai? Here." He triggered one of the seals on the scroll, and some fifteen kunai appeared suddenly in midair and fell to the ground in a cascade of clangs.

Sasuke bent to pick up a kunai, and put three more in his holsters. "That was...very generous, Naruto. Though usually when you hand someone a sharp object, it's considered good practice to, you know, hand it to them, instead of dropping it on their foot."

Zabuza, watching from further along the bridge, chuckled again, low and dangerous. "That's a regular comedy team you've got there, Kakashi. Though the black-haired kid is pretty good. What do you think?" This was addressed to the shorter shinobi beside him, whose long, black hair framed a familiar porcelain mask.

"He is quick," said the other analytically. "Not as quick as me, unless he is holding back quite a lot. I am more afraid of the blond one."

Zabuza glanced at his retainer sideways. "Really? He can make a lot of clones, but they should be no problem for you."

The other hesitated. "I...do not know why."

Zabuza gave him a measuring look. "Can you defeat them?"

"Probably." A chill aura began to emanate out from the masked ninja. "Won't know till I try."

Zabuza chuckled darkly. "Indeed."

Naruto and Sasuke, hearing this exchange, glanced at each other. Sasuke spoke first.

"Mind if I handle him?"

Naruto grinned. "Go ahead. I'll be ready to save your ass."

Sasuke rolled his eyes, but Naruto's look was not that of someone making a pointless joke. He grinned, but he looked at Sasuke steadily as he twiddled his fingers in a manner reminiscent of a ram seal. Sasuke raised his eyebrows at the reference.

"Can you? I thought you couldn't."

Naruto's grin turned predatory. "Oh yes, I can. Five hundred, remember?"

Sasuke slowly grinned as well. "Right. Well, see you." He stepped forwards, and the ninja in the porcelain mask did the same.

They clashed first in a clamor of metal, Sasuke's kunai bound against a long combat needle in the opponent's hand. Then Sasuke disengaged, and dodged sideways to attack the other from behind. What followed was a quick, intricately twisting taijutsu battle, which ended with Sasuke caught by one wrist, the false hunter-nin's hand clamped around it. Sasuke growled and tried several times to break the hold, but was unsuccessful.

"I have the advantage," the masked ninja said in a low, flat voice.

"A remarkable feat of deduction," Sasuke hissed, frustrated. Both had lost their weapons somewhere along the way; their off hands were free. Sasuke reached up and grabbed the hand around his wrist, trying to break the hold again. The other did not interfere; instead, he raised his other hand to his face and made several motions, almost like—

"Hand signs?" said Sasuke, his eyes widening. "One-handed? How?"

His opponent did not respond. Instead, the puddles of water around them, left over from the earlier attack of the water clones, sprang up in the air. As Sasuke looked around wildly, they formed into needles and flew straight at him.

Naruto, watching from the sidelines, gulped and formed a ram seal. It took just one second to draw up the necessary chakra to grossly overload a kawarimi, and he then focused it on Sasuke. The exaggerated puff of smoke of an overloaded technique filled the area around them both, and suddenly Naruto was squarely in the path of the needles, and Sasuke was twenty feet behind, watching.

The needles struck home, piercing Naruto in several score places. Unbeknownst to either Naruto or Sasuke, the precise targeting that would have completely incapacitated the initial target was ruined by the substitution of Naruto, who was shorter and in a completely different position. Instead, they merely hurt like hell. Naruto shouted in sudden pain, but still managed to open the door within him and draw on the Kyuubi's boost. A boosted fist slammed into the enemy's stomach, and he flew backwards almost to Zabuza's feet.

He struggled to stand for a moment, and that was all it took. Sasuke appeared next to him, his hands in the ram seal, and readied a kunai.

"You're slow," he said, almost mockingly, and prepared to stab.

Zabuza's foot slammed into Sasuke, and it was his turn to go flying. He landed just in front of Naruto, who was cursing inventively while pulling needles of ice out of his forearms. Interestingly, the holes where needles had been were already closing up, and the needles in the rest of his body were beginning to melt.

Zabuza turned to the masked ninja, who had just stood. He raised one eyebrow.

"You're going easy on them. Just use it already."

"Hai, Zabuza-sama," the ninja murmured. He walked slowly forward.

"Slow, am I, Uchiha?" he said, coming up to them. Sasuke, too, had only just stood up; he stood beside Naruto, who was still belligerent but looked rather comical with needles sticking out of his body all over.

The ninja made another series of one-handed seals, and a chill filled the air. There was a sound of crackling ice, as if they stood on an iceberg about to fall into the sea, and the water about them began to assemble itself into rectangular mirrors in a dome surrounding the boys.

"I'll show you my true speed," the masked ninja muttered, and stepped into one of the mirrors. His image appeared on its surface, distorted, and was quickly spread to all of them.

Sasuke looked around. In any particular direction he looked, there was a mirror. There was even one straight above him, which seemed of limited utility, unless their opponent was going to drop it on them. Which, admittedly, would be pretty effective.

A needle lanced out from one of the mirrors, grazing Sasuke's cheek. He flinched away from it, and a voice rose from all around them.

"You thought me slow?"

* * *

Kakashi had watched his two students defeating the mysterious enemy with some pride. It didn't seem that they needed his help, and if Zabuza was willing to stay out of it he would as well. That attitude ended as soon as the dome of mirrors went up; if his students were remaining within the technique, they most likely couldn't get out, and there was no reason to allow an enemy time to fight on their own terms. He was just charging forwards, preparing to begin his signature technique, when Zabuza appeared in front of him and laughed mockingly.

"Aren't you forgetting something? Your opponent is me. I'm not so idiotic as to allow Sharingan no Kakashi a free shot at my subordinate."

_Damn._ It seemed that Naruto and Sasuke would have to take care of themselves. He took a step to the side, allowing him to shout back to Sakura without exposing his back to Zabuza.

"Sakura! Protect Tazuna! I'll deal with Zabuza!"

Sakura nodded, and he saw her flash through some hand seals. Behind him, the area around Tazuna rippled and shimmered sickeningly for a moment, then snapped back into place. Kakashi turned his attention back to the Mist nukenin and drew a kunai.

"Are you so confident that this fight will not end just as the last one did? Your little friend won't be in any position to bail you out this time."

Zabuza chuckled. "You're so certain of that? Your brats won't last a minute inside his technique."

"They might surprise you." With that, Kakashi charged at Zabuza, striking with his kunai. Zabuza blocked the blow easily and laughed.

Kakashi attempted to keep his fight near the dome of mirrors where Sasuke and Naruto were trapped, but to no avail. Without his Sharingan exposed, Zabuza had the advantage in pure weapons combat, with his oversized sword matched only against a kunai. Kakashi was forced away again and again, until the mirrors were only visible in the distance and they had approached the first of the scattered materials that had been stacked for construction. He dodged backwards several times and left Zabuza's reach; having achieved that, he paused, and raised one hand to his left eye.

"I suppose I'll have to finish this fight quickly, then."

Zabuza only laughed, his sword back over his shoulder. "You think so? You'll have no chance." As Kakashi raised the headband over his Sharingan, he hung the sword again on the strap around his chest and flashed through a series of seals. "Kirigakure no jutsu. I've had _quite_ some time to think about this battle, Sharingan no Kakashi."

And the mist rolled in.

* * *

Sasuke growled in frustration at the hail of needles flying at him. For some reason, they were all aimed to graze, rather than simply hitting him, as the earlier needles of ice would have; if his opponent hadn't been showing him that dubious mercy, he would no doubt be down on the ground screaming.

Naruto was not having nearly so much trouble. For some reason, the masked ninja seemed to have it in for Sasuke personally. He was beginning to rethink the wisdom of taunting opponents of unknown power about the attributes which, apparently, they held themselves proudly about.

They had both tried to escape the cage. Sasuke had been forced back by a hail of needles. Naruto had run into the same hail of needles, but had simply growled and run straight through it; he had run smack into some sort of invisible field between the mirrors. Apparently this technique was a prison as well as an aid to attack.

Naruto stood beside him, panting heavily. The ice needles from the previous technique were gone by now, and it seemed he was no worse for the wear of them, but several of them had been replaced by genuine metal senbon from the masked ninja's attempt to keep him in the cage. Sasuke looked over at him.

"This isn't working."

"Darn right it isn't," Naruto grumbled. "Any gripe with the idea that we need to get out of here?"

Sasuke half winced. "None whatsoever. Let's see..."

He held a ram seal and concentrated, and got a momentary painful headache for his trouble. "Can't shunshin out. This technique is weird."

Naruto glanced at him. "They're made of ice, right? Try that fireball?"

"Right."

Sasuke flashed through the well-practiced seals and inhaled hugely. Warmth shot through his chest as he released the technique, and he blew fire out his mouth to engulf the near edge of the dome. He held the fireball for some five seconds, nearly twice as long as usual, and when he let it drop it seemed certain that the mirrors must be gone. But when the fire cleared away, only half of one mirror had melted, and it quickly reformed itself with the same sound of crackling ice.

In retaliation, a swarm of needles shot at both boys. They dived aside in opposite directions. Naruto cursed and crossed his hands.

"Kage bunshin no jutsu!"

The cage filled with clones, who targeted the mirrors and began attacking them. The attacks did nothing—as expected, Sasuke thought, if they could take a fireball without catastrophic damage. Instead, a steady sleeting of needles cut the clones down in threes and fours. Quickly they were all gone, and Naruto himself landed on his feet beside him, a few more needles sticking out of his arms for his trouble.

"Can't manifest clones outside, either," he said, panting.

Sasuke glanced around. "He can't be in all the mirrors at once. This is just some sort of illusion. Where is he?"

A needle shot towards him. He dodged aside and stared in the direction it had come from, but there was only another mirror, bearing the familiar image of the enemy in his mask. "Damn it, I can't tell where he is! The needles come from all over the place!"

"Clone technique?" Naruto suggested.

"Maybe..."

Naruto crossed his hands again. "See what you can see. The guy went into high gear when I did this last time, maybe he won't hide so well." And clones filled the dome again.

They lasted no longer than they had before. Needles seemed to come from every side at once, ripping into the mob. Sasuke stared at one mirror in particular, and—there! A needle shot out of it, destroying yet another clone and falling to the ground. But there had been a blur, just visible, as if someone had thrown the needle at speed approaching that of thought.

_I thought this guy was slow?_

The last of Naruto's clones disappeared, and Naruto himself stood back at Sasuke's side, a few needles richer. He snarled as he yanked two of the senbon out of his forearm. The sleeve of his jumpsuit was ripped and torn into near-uselessness, and Sasuke could see the bloody wounds left behind below it; he winced. Naruto seemed to consider them beneath his notice, however, and turned to Sasuke with a growl.

"See anything?"

"Just barely. I think he's actually moving between the mirrors, but it's _insanely_ fast. This—" but Sasuke was cut off by another hail of senbon. He and Naruto dodged apart to avoid them, and Naruto looked back at him.

"This is _pissing me off!_ These things could take a fireball; I'm going to see if they can take the insanely destructive thing." He crossed his hands again, and another crowd of clones filled the dome.

Sasuke's eyes widened. "With all of these?" he almost shouted. Needles were already cutting through the clones.

Naruto shook his head. "No. One. Rest are padding. And— _duck!_ " he shouted, dropping to the ground. Sasuke had just enough warning to throw himself down before something that really shouldn't have been familiar passed over, through and around him. The clones dispersed en masse, a malignant tornado decided to take up residence in Sasuke's ears, and he was face down on the bridge pavement, wondering what had happened— _move! Now!_ his mind shouted at him, and he rolled over and slowly stood.

Across the dome from him and Naruto, three of the mirrors had been obliterated, and the surrounding ones showed significant damage. There was also a deep crater in the bridge, and some part of him winced at the waste. But the mirrors were already repairing themselves. Naruto was already staggering toward the opening, and Sasuke followed along, moving as quickly as he could—which was not that fast, given his numerous needle wounds and the general shaking-up the explosion had handed him. But he was almost convinced he would escape when the shower of needles, which had ceased for a moment, resumed, the enemy in the mirrors apparently having recovered. Sasuke was hit by several and stopped involuntarily. He began again, knowing it was hopeless, that it was too late, but Naruto was ahead of him. The irate blond reached the hole—and was thrown bodily back inside, this time not by any immaterial force, but by the enemy himself, who appeared for a moment independent of any mirror and simply shoved Naruto backwards. Then he disappeared again, and the mirrors finished their reassembly.

The familiar voice echoed from all around. "You should surrender." Its tone was cold, and combined with the utterly emotionless mask that concealed their enemy's face the effect was intimidating. "You cannot escape, even with such a powerful technique, and I will simply cut you apart in here until you are dead. You cannot catch me. You cannot even see me to dodge. Surrender, and only the life of the old man will be forfeit."

"Like _hell,_ " Naruto snarled. He crossed his hands again, and the cage filled with clones. Sasuke cringed, thinking that he was planning to explode more of them, but they simply did as all his clones had, and they met the same fate. Sasuke wasn't sure why Naruto kept doing that; each time he did, he only came back with more needles in him, which had to be painful. Perhaps it was the only thing he could think to do.

The needles came more frequently now. Instead of each of them taking one every few seconds, now they flew in salvos of several, nearly constantly. Sasuke nearly growled in frustration and near despair. They could not get out. They could not get out, and they could not catch their invisibly-fast enemy. _You cannot even see me._ His words echoed in Sasuke's mind, and he snarled. He could not _see!_ Such an unfitting defeat for an Uchiha!

Another flurry of needles shot towards him. He dodged aside, and looking in a random direction managed to see the origin of the next volley, aimed at Naruto. There was a blur, as before, but—was that a streak across the cage? He could not _see!_

_You cannot even see me...cannot even see me...cannot...see...._

A pain was building behind his eyes, but he ignored it. He stared wildly around the dome. Naruto was dodging needles, and Sasuke did the same almost on autopilot. They were getting more difficult, though, cutting closer to him, and he was in aching pain all over from being shaken about by the explosion. As he saw Naruto barely dodge another flight of them, he didn't move far enough. A needle caught him in the arm, and he gasped at the pain.

Another salvo was launched, just within his field of view. There was the familiar blur of motion, but it seemed more discernible than before. Unconsciously, he had stopped dodging, but he did not even notice the needles piercing him. He had attention only for what he saw: a streak of motion beginning where the blur had thrown a volley of needles at him, and ending— _there!_ And that was where the next blur could be seen, and a flurry of needles passed close over Naruto's head.

The pain behind his eyes was becoming more distinct, and he spared a moment to curse it for its distraction. The same streak was crossing the cage again, and he followed it with his eyes, unable to turn his head quickly enough, and needles shot out at him, and hit him again. Then the streak again, and....

_You cannot see me...cannot see me...cannot...cannot...I CAN SEE!_

It was suddenly clear. The enemy, hidden behind his mask, jumped or flew across the cage. He could see it perfectly; the hem of his garment fluttered in the wind of his passage, and he focused intently on the mirror that was his target, which he simply dived into headfirst, melding with the illusory image of him projected on its surface. Then a hand protruded from the mirror, four needles in its grasp, and flicked its wrist, and the needles flew with uncanny precision straight at Naruto. He dodged in slow motion as the needles flew toward him, and they passed close under his right arm and hit the ground, bouncing away in all different directions. One came near him, and almost absently he moved a hand—he could only move in slow motion, how annoying—and grabbed it from the air.

The enemy left the mirror he had been hiding in and flew to another, this time one in the upper row. The motion was finished in a fraction of a second, yet Sasuke could see it perfectly—he could _see_ —as another hand protruded from that mirror, and needles flew towards him.

The motions of the enemy shinobi were astoundingly, inhumanly fast—or, in Sasuke's new vision, of merely ordinary speed. The needles did not share in that—they flew only as fast as projectiles ever flew, and shared in the agonizingly slow stop-motion in which Sasuke saw his own and Naruto's movements. It was a simple matter to raise the hand holding a spent senbon and slowly, precisely, deflect all four of the incoming salvo to one side or another.

He saw Naruto raising his head, looking at him with a gape of surprise. But his attention was on the enemy, who on his next flight across the cage was staring at him with new intensity. Sure enough, the next salvo broke the established pattern and targeted Sasuke again. He deflected it as easily.

The next salvo, he caught, instead. And then, when the enemy began to fly, he timed his slow-moving throw just _there_ , and a needle flew back at their foe.

He weaved just a moment in the air and easily dodged the slow-motion missile, but Sasuke had gotten his attention. The next few volleys came quicker. Sasuke was pressed to deflect them—not to see them, which was easy, but to move the hand with the needle into the path of the incoming projectiles quickly enough. He ended up dropping the other few needles he had caught and simply holding one in each hand.

Then something else happened. One salvo flew towards him, aimed at his chest, and he blocked them all aside. But the enemy had not simply moved on again that time; instead, a hand protruded from the same mirror again, while he was still blocking, and threw another salvo.

This one targeted his neck, and his body betrayed him. He could see, but he could not _move_ —not fast enough, not to block that salvo in its entirety—and given the trouble that he had taken to get it in, and what their enemy had done to Zabuza on the road, Sasuke was seized with a sudden fear of that salvo striking home. He twisted aside desperately, but it was too slow—too slow—and while two of the needles flew just past him, the remaining one hit him through the neck, and he could only watch it happen in agonizing slow motion.

A terrible weakness shot through his body. His legs collapsed, and he fell to his knees. He could see Naruto, who had been staring at him—staring at his _eyes_ , Sasuke realized with a jerk—with new hope, begin to open his mouth in a yell as his eyes shouted fear. He could no longer hold his balance, and he pitched forward to land on his face on the rough stone of the bridge. All the while, he could still see in that wonderful/terrible slow motion, which seemed to be almost mocking him now that he could not move to exploit it.

He was lying down, now, but he was still conscious, could still see. It occurred to him to try to move. He could, but he was weak—so weak. He could barely move his arm up to head level.

He saw Naruto out of the corner of his eye, just barely. He was moving furiously. Then, suddenly, a red glow filled his vision. A terrible fear rolled over him, like Zabuza's killer intent on the road to Wave but so much greater as to be different in kind. He was caught between conflicting impulses, one part of him wanting to freeze, stop moving, stop breathing, stop struggling, stop everything in hopes that that anger would not notice him, the other wanting to run, run until his legs gave out and his heart could no longer beat, run until he could no longer see, hear, feel the malignant power that shared the cage with him. Then the red glow moved, and he realized that it surrounded Naruto.

_What is he?_

* * *

Naruto was in somewhat of a foul mood. First he had taken that huge volley of ice needles for Sasuke (and he did _not_ regret that, he could heal up a lot faster than Sasuke could, but it still hurt _quite a lot_ ), and then for his trouble both of them got sealed up in that stupid dome. And it took the most destructive things either of them could dish out and _still_ kept them prisoner. Even when he managed to break it he couldn't get _out_.

Then, as he fell into a grim routine of just barely dodging the enemy's needles, he noticed something different. Sasuke held a senbon of his own in his hand, and he was _deflecting_ the salvos, not just dodging them. _What? How?_

His first reaction was annoyance— _if he could do that all along, why_ wasn't _he?_ But then he saw the change, and he realized what had happened. Sasuke's eyes were red, and black dots spun madly within them. _The Sharingan!_

And then something went wrong—he could barely see what happened, but he saw the needle sticking out of both sides of Sasuke's neck—and he collapsed. Naruto remembered seeing needles in Zabuza's neck when he apparently died—it did not inform his thought process that Zabuza was, in fact, still alive—and desperate fear shot through him. He couldn't die! Not now! Curse it, one of only a few people who acknowledged Naruto for his strength, if nothing else, would not die!

Fear turned to anger. He barely noticed that his face was contorted in a snarl, or the inhuman sounds coming from his throat. He shouted inside his mind. _Kyuubi! Give me enough power to see the lines! I'm going to cut this cage apart and kill that bastard slowly!_

And a familiar dark chuckle echoed in his mind, and a familiar voice spoke within him. **Gladly, whelp.**

And power flowed through him.

When he called on the boost, he was reinforced; his speed and strength were multiplied, and he had already noticed that his healing accelerated even beyond its already-insane level. This was as far beyond the greatest boost he had ever called as that was beyond his own, unaugmented strength. The needles that flew towards him—ignoring Sasuke now, as he had been ignored when Sasuke was deflecting the attacks—were childishly easy to dodge, but he did not even bother to do so. They struck his skin and pierced it, and were as quickly forced out, and the wounds healed in seconds.

When he called on the boost, the bits of the Kyuubi's influence that flowed over him were inconsequential. After a few fights, he had learned to recognize them: the instinct to strike with a slashing swipe rather than a punch, the instinct to take a blow to return one rather than dodging aside, his ordinary urge to test himself in battle made more intense, and a joy found in the act of fighting, all aside from his usual goals of becoming stronger and being recognized. Now, though, even as a tiny part of his mind shouted in alarm that he was not himself, the majority was washed away in a flood of anger, feeding on and reinforcing the anger he himself had felt at Sasuke's apparent death.

The enemy was around him. The enemy had killed a precious person of his. Sasuke was _under his protection_. His killer would _die._

He had intended only to cut the mirrors on their lines with a kunai, or one of the senbon cluttering the inside of the cage, and indeed he could see lines on the mirrors, on the bridge, on everything. They had changed—occasionally, two or three lines met, in an ugly little blotch of black, that put him in mind of rotting flesh and shattered wood. But they seemed inconsequential now. He needed nothing so feeble as the Eyes of Death to destroy this cage. He had _power._

He charged at a mirror, his speed impossibly fast. The same flurry of needles came at him, attempting to drive him back, but they did as little as they had all along. He swung at the mirror with the slashing motion that the power prompted him with. It felt entirely natural, and indeed, when he looked at his hands, short, blunt claws graced their fingertips. But they did not do the damage to the mirror. Instead, the angry red shroud that gathered about him in waves flowed to his hands, forming long claws of chakra that reached ahead of them, and struck the mirror with terrible force. His hand stopped for a moment—just a moment—as the corrosive chakra ate away at the empowered ice, and then it shattered. It was only a moment later that the entire rest of the array broke in pieces as one, and the form of his enemy flew forwards over his head to land in a heap ahead of him.

He stood quickly, but Naruto was already charging at him, swinging ruthlessly with his shrouded claws. One blow was dodged, another, another. But then one connected, and blood flowed from the ninja's arm, and there was a gasp of pain. And that was the pattern, until a half-dozen minor wounds bled freely, soaking the enemy's long single garment, and his movements had begun to appear labored.

The enemy spoke, but his voice was not now flat and cold, but—sad. "So, you will use this power to kill me, Naruto-kun?"

Naruto mentally froze, even as he continued to strike out at his foe on instinct. _How does he know my name?_ And that voice, in that tone...it was familiar.

And it was in that moment that the masked ninja missed another dodge, and this time, Naruto's claws caught the edge of his mask, and it came away with the blow, and fell to shatter on the bridge. Naruto did not notice. He had actually, physically frozen this time, two incompatible impressions clashing in his head.

_He killed Sasuke, he fights alongside Zabuza, he is an enemy..._

_Civilian, friendly, looks like a girl, seeks to heal someone precious to him..._

And Naruto realized with a horrible jerk that the two were the same, and his voice was plaintive as he spoke, hoping beyond hope for someone to tell him that he was mistaken.

"Haku?"

The enemy—no, Haku—was he an enemy? Haku had stopped moving when Naruto did, and simply stood still on the bridge in front of him. His shirt-kimono-thing was patchy with red, and three scratches were beginning to bleed on his face, relict of the blow that had torn off his mask. At Naruto's question, he bowed his head.

"I am Haku."

Naruto stared at him. The chakra shroud around him became chaotic, swirling in and out to follow no discernible pattern, and Naruto's next word came out as a whisper.

"Why?"

Haku looked back up at him. "To protect one who is precious to me."

"Who..." Naruto answered his own question. "Zabuza."

Haku nodded. "Zabuza-sama raised me up when I was lower than the dirt. He recognized me when I was invisible, and gave me purpose when I had none. He is precious to me, and I would do anything to protect him."

Naruto bowed his head, squeezing his eyes shut, tears leaking out. "Sasuke..."

"I would kill another to protect him. Would you not do the same? Knowing what you do, if you could have struck me down before I hit your teammate, would you?"

Naruto nodded. The red shroud had entirely faded now, and, though he did not notice it, his hands and face had returned to normal. He raised his head, opened his eyes and looked at Haku.

He was looking back with sadness and pity in his face. Unexpectedly, he bowed.

"You should kill me, Naruto-kun."

Naruto started. "You...you want me to kill you?"

Haku nodded. "I have failed. I have not the power to restrain you, and you will no doubt use your power to aid your teacher and kill Zabuza-sama. If I could give my life for his I would, but I have no such ability. I can only die."

A shudder passed through Naruto, and his shoulders shook. "Sasuke..."

"Can you not muster the rage to kill me?"

Haku's voice was not mocking, as it might have been. It was pure kindness and pity.

Naruto looked back up at him, instincts fighting within him—one to kill, to destroy the one who had hurt him, to make of him an example that would inspire fear for the next thousand years, the other to protect, to comfort a kind stranger who seemed in unnecessary despair. His face twisted in indecision, and then, suddenly, there was a blur behind Haku and Sasuke appeared, his face twisted in anger and pain, and hit Haku in the head with the ring of a kunai. He crumpled immediately, and Sasuke stared down at him.

"You're fast, but I'm faster."

Naruto stared at him in disbelief. There were spots of blood on his clothing, and his shirt was ripped and torn. Several needles still stuck out of him, and there was a bloody wound on his neck—but no senbon, Naruto noticed—and an angry red scrape on his face. Naruto could not quite believe his eyes.

"Sasuke?"

Sasuke looked up at him, and he raised one eyebrow in a very familiar way. "Yes?"

Naruto had not quite gotten it through his head yet. "You-you're not dead!"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Congratulations."

A grin threatened to tear Naruto's face apart. "Yatta!"

Sasuke crossed the intervening space in only a few steps and whacked him in the head. "Save it, dobe! There's still a fight going on."

Naruto rubbed his head with a near-pout, then straightened up. "Right, teme." He looked around.

The dome of mirrors had shattered, and the ice, no longer bolstered by Haku's chakra, had melted. The entire area was wet, and water puddled between the paving stones. There was still a deep hole in the bridge where the dome had been, courtesy of Naruto's exploding clone, but otherwise the battle had left no sign.

The bridge still ended some tens of yards behind them, but the more interesting manifestation was the fogbank further down in the opposite direction. It was small, but very thick; Naruto could see nothing through it, but it ended abruptly off both sides of the bridge. He glanced over at Sasuke, who glanced back.

"It looks like that Kirigakure no Jutsu that Zabuza used," said Sasuke. Naruto nodded.

"Should we go see what we can see?" he asked.

Sasuke moved his hands back and forth like scales, then dropped one. "I don't think so. If we could see clearly, I'd say yes, but as it is we might seriously mess things up by blundering in."

Naruto nodded, then looked back at Sasuke. His eyes were still the bright red of the Sharingan, and a single comma-like tomoe adorned each.

"Hey, Sasuke, are you aware that you've activated your eyes?"

Sasuke smiled smugly. "I got the idea from how I couldn't see him, then suddenly could."

Naruto grinned. "Hey, congratulations. Bet you're even more insufferable now."

Being the middle of the ocean, even if in a rather narrow strait, there was, as usual, a steady breeze blowing. This had previously not touched the mist further down the bridge, but something seemed to have changed. The mist began to shred and disperse, and figures became visible within it. It took only a moment for the visibility to increase enough that the genin could identify Zabuza, pinned and held by a large number of— _dogs? Where did they come from?_ Kakashi was also visible just in front of him, blood soaking one hand. As they watched, he took a step back and slowly, deliberately, bowed. Then he made a gesture, and the dogs vanished into puffs of smoke. Zabuza fell, toppling over like a tree, and Kakashi reached up, recovered his Sharingan, and walked back along the bridge towards them.

He came up to the two boys and smiled under his mask. "I assume you were successful?"

Naruto indicated Haku's unconscious body, off to one side. "We were, sensei."

"Good, good." Kakashi looked again at Sasuke, and raised one eyebrow. "Congratulations, Sasuke."

Sasuke grinned. "Thank you, sensei." He looked around, seeing Sakura off to one side, Tazuna behind her. Then frowned, confused, glancing back and forth between Sakura and a seemingly empty spot some fifteen feet to her right. "Sakura? Where are you?"

She squeaked and made a sign, and suddenly disappeared, standing instead, along with Tazuna, in the spot Sasuke had looked at. He nodded slightly. "Genjutsu?"

Sakura nodded, slightly pink, and came up to them, Tazuna following. "How did you know? I thought it was—oh!" She had come close enough to see his eyes. "Ah, congratulations, Sasuke-kun!"

He nodded, slightly impatiently. "So what do we do now?"

Kakashi shrugged. "Well, today seems to be a bit of a bust as far as the bridge- building goes," he said, indicating the mostly-unconscious workers. "Zabuza is dead. What about his ally?"

"Knocked out," said Naruto. He took a deep breath. "Sensei...we shouldn't kill him. I...met him a few days ago, in the forest, without the mask on. He's not a bad person. He just...was loyal to the wrong guy."

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Do you think that he will be a threat?"

Naruto shook his head. "I don't think so. Now that Zabuza is dead...I don't think he'd want to kill Tazuna. And anyway, together we could beat him easily." He let out a shaky laugh. "He already thinks I'm stronger than he is..."

Kakashi nodded. "Very well. His ally will remain alive. We can take him with us to Konoha. Anything else?"

"I don't think so," said Naruto. Then raised his head, hearing something. "Hey, what's that?"

The others had heard it too—the sound of boats hissing through the water. Naruto looked over towards the end of the bridge. "Hey, there's a bunch of guys in boats coming up over there." Sure enough, a rough crowd of people were climbing up the ladders at the end of the bridge, seemingly from the boats that congregated around its base. They moved forwards, and more kept coming, until there was a crowd of some hundreds, taking up most of the end of the bridge. They were rough-looking men, obviously mercenaries, and most of them carried some sort of edged weapon or other. They would be no match for any ninja one-on-one, but a force this size could be a credible threat.

A knot of men pushed forwards through the crowd. There were four large, looming mercenaries, looking more respectable (or at least _cleaner_ ) than the rest of the crowd. Between them was a short man with a mane of wild hair, sunglasses that reminded Naruto of Aburame Shino, Hinata's teammate, and a disgruntled look on his face. His arm was in a sling.

He spoke in a peremptory snarl. "Where the hell is Zabuza?"

Kakashi looked at him. "Dead. He attempted to kill our client."

The man scowled, then slowly smiled. "Good enough. Saves me the trouble of killing him. Not like I was going to _pay_ that insane amount for a single assassination—really!"

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Gatou, I presume?"

Gatou smirked. "That's right! But hey, isn't that...Yasu, take a look at that!" He indicated Haku's body, between Gatou and the Konoha shinobi. One of the four bodyguards walked over to him—Naruto tensed, and Kakashi laid a warning hand on his shoulder—and knelt down to check him.

"It's that bratty kid! The one who..." but here the bodyguard seemed to think better of finishing his sentence. He placed a hand on Haku's neck, and grinned. "And he's still alive!"

Gatou sniffed. "Is he? Pity. Yasu, kill him."

It all happened at once. Naruto ripped Kakashi's hand off his shoulder and dived forwards, but he was too slow. The bodyguard, Yasu, had grinned, and drawing a knife, plunged it straight through Haku's neck. Blood sprayed out, droplets spattering on Yasu's clothes and face, and he smiled sadistically. Then his grin turned to horror as Naruto reached him.

_Haku didn't deserve to die. He was going to survive, I was going to help him, keep him from going nuts when Zabuza died. He didn't deserve to die! Especially not of some worthless mercenary bought and paid for by that petty tyrant!_

It all flashed through Naruto's mind in an instant, and then he had a kunai out, and Yasu was looking at him in horror, and his knife was still bound up in Haku's neck, and he raised a hand in fruitless defense, and Naruto's kunai slashed through his throat.

Turmoil raged inside him. _I should have moved quicker! I should have gotten him as soon as he came near Haku! I didn't move quickly enough!_ And though the fox's power had left him, he felt a restless stirring in the mental area that he had identified as mapping to the seal, the fox's chakra feeding on his anger. Yasu's body had just fallen to the ground when Naruto, locking onto Gatou as the true cause of Haku's death, launched himself at him.

Yasu had had no time to react; the other bodyguards around Gatou did. One had stepped in front of the tycoon and tried to block Naruto's first blow with his blood-soaked kunai. The block was only partially successful; the bodyguard winced as the kunai cut his hand below the blade of his sword, but that was enough time for him to kick Naruto backwards, hard. Naruto landed in a crouch and, snarling, hurled the bloody kunai at the guard's head. His eyes had barely widened when the kunai hit one with dreadful force and pierced the bodyguard's skull. He fell like a puppet whose strings were cut.

Naruto was about to hurl himself at Gatou again, but the magnate did not look fearful; he was laughing, and he held up a hand in gesture to stop. Naruto halted, suspicious.

"Are you angry at me for killing him, little ninja? I don't care. The brat broke my arm; he deserved it. But you don't want to go for me right now, I don't think. Bring them out!"

The latter was an order, shouted backwards over his shoulder, and there was another stir in the crowd of mercenaries as people pushed forwards. Two men came out of the crowd and walked forward to stand beside Gatou. But it was not the men that were significant—they were only the usual rough, uncouth mercenaries—but the two people that they held hostage in front of them.

Naruto gasped. "Tsunami! Inari!" Tazuna's daughter and grandson were the worse for wear, but alive. Tsunami had the beginning of a bruise on one cheek, and Inari was scraped and battered all over. Both stared at him with despair in their eyes, and each had a rusty knife at their throat courtesy of the mercenary behind them.

Naruto stood, slowly, and stepped backward until he again stood near the rest of his team. He spoke softly, out of the side of his mouth. "Kakashi-sensei, we've got to save them."

Kakashi replied as quietly. "I think we can stretch the mission parameters that far, yes."

Gatou, meanwhile, had laughed. "Hey, you, bridge-builder! I have your family here. Surrender yourself, and they won't be harmed. Any trouble, and..." He made a gesture, and the mercenaries holding the two hostages laughed nastily.

Tazuna stared at Gatou, his face broken. "It was obvious enough that you didn't care about legal means anymore when you killed Kaiza, but I didn't think you'd associate yourself so openly with this kind of thing," he muttered. Gatou heard.

"Who cares? After this, I won't need to hold up appearances anymore. No one will dare to oppose me, and no one will be able to leave. I'll make sure of that." He laughed heartily.

Naruto glared at him. His anger when Haku had seemingly killed Sasuke, and when Gatou's bodyguard had killed Haku, had been hot, fierce, and demanding of immediate action. This standoff had turned his anger cold, but it was no less terrible for that. "Kakashi-sensei, I can do it."

"Go ahead." Kakashi's voice was as angry as Naruto had ever heard it.

Naruto crossed his hands, feeding a seemingly tiny amount of chakra, and three clones popped into existence in front of him. Each formed a ram seal and carried out a technique that was deeply familiar after the past week of training, and suddenly, they were replaced by Tsunami, Inari, and Gatou, snatched from behind his bodyguards. Both Tsunami and Inari collapsed, and after a moment's hesitation Sakura darted forwards and crouched over them both, determining the severity of their injuries. Sasuke had moved forward and held a kunai to Gatou's throat.

Gatou seemed poleaxed by the sudden reversal. He opened his mouth, but no words came out, only a kind of distant, fishlike gasping. Sasuke snorted in contempt.

"Kakashi-sensei, what should we do with him?"

Kakashi looked over at Tazuna. Tazuna looked back, stunned. Kakashi raised an eyebrow.

"Tazuna-san, what's your opinion?"

Tazuna stared for a moment, then spoke weakly. "If...even if we finished the bridge, if he was alive, he might still make trouble. And he...killed...Kaiza. He...."

He did not finish, but Kakashi nodded. "I agree." He glanced over at Sasuke. "Sasuke, kill him."

Sasuke froze for a moment, then nodded and jerked the kunai inward, perhaps a little more violently than necessary. Gatou's head dropped to the ground, and his body, the neck spurting blood, collapsed. Just like that, it was over.

Sasuke stepped back, staring absently at his right arm warmer, which had spots of Gatou's blood on it. He was silent for a moment, then gave his trademark snort.

Kakashi stepped forwards, standing between Gatou's body and the mob. "All right!" he shouted. "Gatou is dead. You're not being paid to stand around and look menacing anymore, so you should just go home. Hire yourselves out to someone else."

An uneasy murmur ran through the crowd. They had force of numbers on their side, but none of them wanted to be the ones who stepped forward first and died. Tension lay on the air, and Kakashi shifted his weight downward minutely—and then a voice rang out, anonymous, from the middle of the crowd.

"Fat chance!" it brayed, and there were a few scattered, nervous laughs. "You've killed our meal ticket, so I guess we'll just have to take our compensation out of Wave Country's hide! Best get out of the way, or we'll go through you doing it!"

And there was a scattered chorus of laughter, and calls of agreement. Noise rose up, and Kakashi spoke softly. "Damn."

Naruto and Sasuke both looked at him in surprise. Kakashi looked over at them. "We're going to have to fight, and I don't have much chakra left. How are you two feeling?"

Naruto stared at the mob, who were nerving themselves up to attack. Images rushed through his mind, Haku's ignominious death prominent among them. _I didn't act fast enough...and Haku died. He shouldn't have died. These thugs killed him...and now they're going after everyone else. I didn't act fast enough! Not again!_

He spoke, his voice cold. "Kakashi-sensei, permission to terminate the threat."

Kakashi looked at him in surprise. "Will it put you in danger?"

"No, sensei."

Kakashi stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "Proceed."

Naruto crossed his hands, and more shadow clones appeared. There were more of them this time, several dozen, and they largely filled the space between Team Seven and the mob. The group shied back somewhat at the sudden appearance of (apparently) reinforcements, but Naruto did not notice. Each clone, knowing from its creation precisely what Naruto had in mind, stared around the crowd, picking out a target. Then, as one, they formed the ram seal, and the group of clones was replaced in a series of poofs with very confused mercenaries. Naruto had no eyes for them. He was staring out at the larger crowd, now dotted with blotches of orange.

A sort of tension filled the air, tangible to the chakra-sensitive, and if one looked closely at the crowd, one might have seen bits of blue haze in certain areas. Then, as Naruto smiled thinly, he spoke.

"Boom."

The mercenary crowd was erased behind splotches of blinding light, and just a moment later there was deafening sound. It came in several waves, and the shock wave carried with it bits of sand and gravel that pelted the shinobi. Naruto stood still throughout, staring steadily towards the end of the bridge. His ears rang, but he ignored it. When the dust had cleared, the end of the bridge where the mercenaries had stood...was clear. That, at least, he could say, that it was clear of enemies.

There were deep craters in the bridge wherever a clone had stood. Expected. The areas around the craters...were clear. Mostly. They were rather more red than the color of the stone, but...they were clear.

Further away, there were some actual people. Or larger bits of people, anyway. None of them were in any shape to pose a threat, those that were still alive.

Naruto's eyes raked over the area between himself and the craters. The few dozen mercenaries that his clones had exchanged with were staring, horror in their faces. A few, being closer to the blasts than the shinobi, had been knocked down. None were seriously injured.

There were screams coming up from the places between the craters, only just now audible over the roaring in his ears.

Naruto's eye stopped on a bit of debris near one of the closest of the craters. A second look revealed it to be a hand.

Kakashi stared at him. "Naruto..."

He spoke without emotion. "Threat has been terminated, sensei."

Kakashi seemed to shake himself, and nodded. "That it has, Naruto. ...Good job."

Sasuke stepped up next to him, his face slightly paler than usual. His eyes scanned over the area of the carnage. He spoke softly, almost to himself. "Anyone who gets in the way of that new technique of yours is going to die. We just have to make sure that's not us."

Naruto replied in a dead tone. "Operation Stay Out of the Blast Radius, successful."

Sasuke snorted and relaxed. After a moment, so did Naruto, but his eyes were haunted.

* * *

Team Seven sat in a circle on the ground in front of Tazuna's house. Naruto was still unusually silent, and Sakura looked at him with new respect and a bit of fear.

After dragging the wounded out of the area, Kakashi had cleared off the blood and...body parts using some sort of water jutsu. Naruto had helped with handling the wounded; there were enough of them that without his clones it would have taken all day. At first, each one he handled had driven a little spike through his heart— _I caused this_ —but after a while it callused over. The day had been a bust as far as bridge construction went, so after the area was cleared, they had just gone back to the house.

Kakashi was the first to speak, breaking a heavy silence. "Naruto, are you feeling all right?"

Naruto shrugged uncommunicatively.

Kakashi looked at him measuringly. "You've never done anything like that before, have you." It was not a question.

Naruto shrugged again. "Mizuki..."

Kakashi shook his head. "Not the same thing. Only one person, his body mostly intact, and if I recall correctly you fell unconscious immediately afterwards—you didn't really have contact with the aftermath."

Naruto simply shrugged.

Kakashi looked straight at him. "Listen, Naruto. I think I know what you're feeling. A...teammate of mine had a similar experience when he first saw real action, in the Third Great War. You are questioning that a person who could do such a thing could ever be 'good', or that they are worthy to associate with good people in a peaceful village."

Naruto did not answer, but he didn't shrug, either.

Kakashi's voice was as close to soft as he'd ever heard it. "Listen, Naruto. Why does the village remain peaceful?"

"Because the shinobi protect it." Naruto's voice was that of someone repeating words learned by rote.

"And how do they do that?"

Naruto shifted, and looked at Kakashi with surprise. "By...fighting off the enemies of the village."

"Correct. And what does that entail?"

Naruto did not answer. Kakashi changed tack. "What do you think would have happened if we had simply gotten out of the way and let that mob past into Wave?"

Naruto looked up at him with horror. "Sensei!"

"Answer the question."

Naruto shuddered. "They would have...hurt a lot of people. Destroyed things. Stolen everything they had. The women...." He shuddered again, not finishing the sentence.

Kakashi's voice had mild steel in it. "Correct. And is this worth preventing?"

Naruto looked at him with like steel. "Yes." The word was emphatic; it conveyed a world's certainty in one syllable.

Kakashi nodded. "Naruto...if you had not done what you did, then we would have had to fight that mob ourselves. And if we won, then the outcome for them would have been the same. You saw what you did to Gatou's bodyguards even when wildly attacking them. Is dying in your explosions really that much worse?"

Naruto shrugged.

Kakashi went on. "And we would not have been certain of victory. We would have been in danger ourselves. Some of us might have died. Tazuna, Tsunami and Inari were there, and could not defend themselves. They might have died. And if we were all killed, then the mob would have attacked Wave anyway. And our desperate defense, and our death, would have been for nothing. Do you understand?"

Naruto nodded, slowly.

Kakashi nodded back, sharply. "Good. What you did was the best thing you could have done—you took out the enemy, quickly, precisely, and without overt collateral damage. Well, except all those holes in the bridge." Naruto rolled his eyes at Kakashi, and Kakashi smiled beneath his mask. "So I don't want to hear you doubting yourself. You did well, and you did good."

Naruto nodded again, and his voice was almost choked. "Th-thank you, sensei."

Kakashi remained silent for a while before asking another question. "Naruto, where and from whom did you learn the _bunshin daibakuha_?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head in confusion. "The what now?"

Kakashi stared at him for a moment. "The clone explosion." He refrained from saying, _the technique you just used to kill about two hundred men._

Naruto perked up. "Oh! That! What I'm doing is—you know I've made my own explosive notes for a while?"

At Kakashi's nod, he continued: "Well, I know the, the chakra...shape that goes into explosive notes pretty well, so what I'm doing is just making the clone shape its chakra like that. So it explodes really big, and of course dispels the clone. I actually had the idea right after I learned shadow clones, but I never had good enough chakra control before doing all that training this week." He grinned.

Kakashi stared at him. "You're manipulating chakra into a fuinjutsu shape? Without seals?"

Naruto shrugged. "Well, I do use a seal. It's just what felt right." He demonstrated the sign, which resembled a horse but with the fingers all twisted through each other.

Kakashi examined his hands from all angles. "Interesting...how did you come up with this?"

Naruto shrugged again. "It's...just what felt right. I don't know, I was just thinking about the shape that the explosive note makes and how it's like the shape that the seals make, and it's kind of like horse, but...different. So I fiddled around until I figured this out. It's still not just right, but it's close enough that my chakra control can make up the difference."

Kakashi laughed. "Naruto, you are forever unpredictable. Very well."

It was then that Sasuke broke in. "Naruto...I had a question."

Naruto looked at him with a sudden sense of foreboding. "What?"

"What did you do to get us out of that dome of mirrors? I felt just the tail edge of it, and it was..." he shuddered, "damned scary, dobe."

Naruto's face froze. "I, uh, I can't say."

Sasuke looked at him shortly. "That's not good enough anymore, dobe. Running off into nowhere for no reason, all right, large, elaborate seals on your stomach, all right, but if you have this sort of ability we need to know about it. We're your teammates—we need to know what you can do."

Naruto looked panicked. "I can't say. I really, actually can't. There's a law against anyone saying—Sensei?"

Naruto looked over at Kakashi, who looked interested but not really engaged. Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "The law doesn't apply to you, Naruto. You can tell whomever you want. It was meant to protect you, not to make things more difficult for you."

Naruto's eyes widened. "Is that true?" Kakashi nodded.

Naruto looked back at his teammates, and sighed. "I...guess so, then. All right." His face twisted. "But..."

Sasuke had watched this byplay with some fascination. "What _is_ it, dobe?"

Naruto took a shaky breath. "All right...well, I guess...do you two know my birthday?"

Sakura shook her head. "I don't think you ever told us."

Naruto laughed shortly. "Yeah...it's nothing that I ever want to remember. I was born on October tenth, twelve years ago."

Sakura thought this over in her head, and gasped. "The day the Kyuubi attacked!"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. And...and there's something else you should know. When a...demon, as powerful as the Kyuubi, is unbound, like it was then...you can't kill it. It's impossible to kill."

Sakura made the connection first. "But then how did the Yondaime defeat it?"

Naruto gave a shaky laugh. "Well...it's me, isn't it? The only thing you can do with a demon that powerful is seal it away. And...it needs a person to seal it in. A baby. So..." he raised his shirt and channeled chakra, and the elaborate eight-lobed seal appeared as usual, "this seal, what it does, is it imprisons the Kyuubi inside my body."

Both of his teammates gasped. Sasuke recovered first. "The Kyuubi? So...what's that mean?"

Naruto sighed. "I can draw some of its power up. Like, Sasuke, when we fought that first day and I was a lot stronger, that was me doing it for the first time. I didn't even mean to do it—the dratted fox was _pushing_ it at me. It makes me get stronger, faster. Oh, and I can heal up from stuff insanely quickly. Like, even after I took all those needles today at the bridge, there's no wounds left, anymore."

Sasuke felt his neck, where the bloody hole in both sides remained, albeit bandaged. "Lucky," he said wryly.

Naruto looked down solemnly. "You know, it might almost be. Except that everyone who was old enough when it attacked knows about me, and most of the civilians don't quite get that I'm not actually the Kyuubi reborn. So they...they don't treat me real well. There's only like one restaurant in the whole village that will actually give me food."

Sasuke stared at him. "Really."

Naruto nodded.

Sasuke stared at him some more, then shook his head. "Insane." He laughed softly. "Wow, it's like the inverse of me. I have these eyes, and I'm the last of my family...so everyone thinks I'm going to be the most powerful ninja in the village and they're always sucking up to me. And you've got something even more powerful, and they treat you like...like that."

Naruto looked at him, startled. "You, Uchiha Sasuke, are admitting that I am more powerful than you? Did you get hit on the head, or something?"

Sasuke looked at him soberly. "I felt...what you did, to break that cage, Naruto. It was...scary. I couldn't have fought you if my life depended on it. I don't think I could have moved." Then his voice became sardonic. "Don't let it get to your head."

Naruto stared at him, then laughed sharply. "You know, of all the things I never thought you'd ever say to me, that just about makes the top ten. 'Don't let it get to your head.' From you. Hah."

Sasuke rolled his eyes.

Sakura raised her voice timidly. "Naruto? You...more powerful than Sasuke-kun?"

Naruto looked over at her. "Yeah. Probably, if I let out...that. I can't, really, though, unless I'm really angry at something. I opened it up in the cage when I thought that Haku had killed Sasuke."

Sakura nodded. "I...see."

"So...now you know," Naruto said. He laughed tiredly. "Not...as hard as I thought it would be. But yeah."

Sasuke grinned tightly at him. "Right. The dobe has an ancient demon god of incalculable power sealed in his stomach. Duly noted."

Naruto laughed. "Glad you've got that down."

* * *

Naruto sat in the same place, staring around, his eyes haunted. Lines adorned the world, black and menacing, still occasionally meeting to form a point larger and darker than the usual. _Are those those points that Kyuubi keeps talking about? Must be._ He had grown adept at ignoring the lines recently, with all his training in the boost; he would simply, well, ignore them, until they went away. But that was the problem, wasn't it? They weren't going away.

He called out inside his mind, something that was becoming easier and easier. _Fox! What's going on with the lines? Why are they still here?_

There was a dark laugh. **You have advanced the ability, whelp. You see the points now, do you not?**

_I do, but what do you mean, advanced the ability? I didn't do anything like that._

**You called today on more of my power than ever. My power changes you, WHELP. This is why you see the lines at all. Your eyes are like mine now.**

Naruto clenched his teeth. _You mean the lines won't go away?_

**They will not.** And there was another laugh.

_Fox, the lines drive me insane if I see them for too long. How do I turn them off?_

The fox's reply was grudging. **The seal on your body imprisons me and isolates my chakra. It can seal my eyes. Meditate on it, WHELP. You already know where it lies in your mind.**

_Wait, what do you mean?_ But the fox did not reply.

Naruto sighed. He had an idea of what the fox meant; the door in his mind that controlled the boost he received had to be related to the seal. But he had no idea how to go about trying to seal off the eyes.

_Well, nothing to do but try, I suppose._

* * *

The next day, Kakashi had to wake them up in time to go to the bridge with Tazuna. Naruto complained bitterly about this for a moment, but Kakashi asked him in a sardonic tone just what he thought would have been accomplished if the bridge did not get built, and he stopped. When they arrived, though, Tazuna was met with another unpleasant surprise.

"Where the hell are the rest of you?" he yelled, staring out at the workers assembled on the bridge—barely half the number that had been there the day before.

One of the workers shuffled his feet for a moment before stepping forwards to reply. "Well, Tazuna-san...a lot of them...it was too much, getting taken out by those ninja yesterday. Not to mention the ones who...died. They...didn't want to come anymore."

Tazuna paced furiously back and forth. "Perfect! Simply perfect! With only you we can't get the bridge finished on schedule! We go through _Hell_ to get this bridge built, and then _after_ the battle is won you people lose your nerve?"

The worker bristled. "I came, Tazuna-san."

Tazuna halted momentarily in his pacing. "Sorry, Kurou. I know. I'm just annoyed." He was interrupted by a hand plucking at his elbow.

He looked down to see Naruto. "Well, Naruto? What is it?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head. "Uh...Tazuna-san, I can do some work. I just thought, well, because I did a lot of the damage that you have to repair..." He laughed sheepishly.

Tazuna thought for a moment. "Well, that's somewhat helpful, Naruto. But you can't really do enough to make up for the lack of everyone else."

Naruto grinned. "Yes I can!" He crossed his hands, and a mob of some twenty clones appeared around him. "See?"

Tazuna froze for a moment before laughing. "All right, I guess you can." He turned back to the civilian workers, who were staring in bemusement. "What are you waiting for? Let's get to work!"

* * *

Naruto, in the process of filling in another of his craters, sighed. It was fun to do some physical work that meant something, and felt good to help repair some of the damage he had done to the bridge—but he still saw lines everywhere. They had persisted all night, and he was now relatively routinely seeing things and...people fall apart in the corners of his vision. It did not have the same effect it had had three years ago—if nothing else, it was relatively tame and harmless compared to what he had really done with his clones—but it was still distracting and depressing. He had yet been unable to find the way to turn off the eyes with his seal, and he was getting tired of it.

Later that evening, he began the process again. The door that controlled the boost he understood; it would close, and that would hold the boost out, even when the fox pushed it at him, and it would open, its usual state, in which he was free to call the boost up quickly but the fox could also surprise him with it—which, so far, only happened when he sparred with Sasuke. He assumed that the fox could tell that using boost against Sakura was gross overkill and unfair to her.

He usually closed that door when he meditated, to try to minimize the effect of the Kyuubi's chakra in him. Today, annoyed, he closed it more emphatically than usual—and the lines flickered.

He started, then, half convinced he was imagining it, tried it again. Again, the lines flickered. He frowned and, this time leaving the door closed, visualized _pushing_ on it. And the lines disappeared.

He grinned and relaxed, and they flickered back into existence again. But it was still progress.

After some time, he found that he could forcibly suppress the lines, but it took concentration, and the moment his concentration was broken, they came back. He scowled. _Darned door won't stay closed...wish I had some sort of wedge to hold it shut._ He laughed at the crossing of metaphors, then suddenly froze. That couldn't work, could it? It wasn't like it was a physical door.

Well, nothing to do but try. He slammed the door shut again, holding it, and in the bit of his mind that was imagining him leaning against a physical door to hold it shut, he instead visualized a little wooden wedge-shaped doorstop, and jammed it underneath.

And he relaxed, and the lines stayed gone.

He grinned and spoke in his mind. _Hey, fox! Is this what you meant?_

There was no reply.

Frowning, he tried to call on the boost, and could not. But when he removed his mental wedges—the work of several seconds of concentration—it worked as normal. Of course, the lines popped back up immediately.

_Right. Well, that's one way, I suppose._

* * *

The bridge was finished three days later, and the day after that was their final day there. With heartfelt goodbyes to Tazuna, Tsunami and Inari, the four shinobi departed across the newly finished bridge. Tazuna grinned after them, several of his workers surrounding him.

It wasn't until later that one of them asked him if he had thought about a name for the bridge. As a matter of fact, he had.

"We'll call it the Great Naruto Bridge."

The surprise on the worker's face was tangible. "Naming it after that boy in orange? Why?"

Tazuna gazed along the bridge, his face solemn.

"Because he saved Wave. He really did. What would have happened if that mob had gotten through...is no joke." He ran his foot along the edge of one of the now-filled-in craters, the paving above them a different color than the stone around.

"And we can call these the Great Naruto Craters."


	9. Foreigners

The path to Wave Country had been along the ground, at the best speed available to a civilian who, if not out of shape, was certainly getting on in years—not to mention, for the first part of the journey at least, constantly drunk. The path back was in the treetops, at the best speed available to a team of genin who had just been training their chakra control constantly for a week. The route that had taken five days on the way out passed under them in less than a day.

Naruto recognized the walls of Konoha rising out of the forest ahead with a grin and a shout of relief. "Finally! This was getting really boring!" He was running alongside Kakashi with no trouble; the other two had slowed over the course of the long day of almost nonstop running, but were keeping up, if behind by a fraction.

Sasuke pushed to run alongside Naruto. "Boring? Your complaint is that this is boring?"

Naruto looked at him strangely. "Yeah. What, are you getting some deep philosophical insight out of every branch?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "I suppose the fact that you _never get tired_ is another gift of the fox?"

Naruto sighed. "I guess so. I mean, I do get tired, but usually only when people are beating on me."

"Typical."

They landed on the path leading to the gate, just past the edge of the cleared safety zone surrounding the walls. Kakashi led the way as they walked, single file, towards the gate, where the inset door next to the guard box stood open.

"Team Seven, returning from successful mislabeled A-rank mission," said Kakashi. The guard in the box raised an eyebrow.

"That must have been fun. Team Seven, return confirmed. I'm sure the Hokage will want to hear all about it."

Kakashi eye-smiled and continued into the city. The genin followed after him.

They stood in front of the Hokage's table in the mission-assignments room. A team of genin that Naruto had never seen before was receiving a mission when they walked in; Kakashi stood silently until they had walked out, then spoke to the Hokage. "Hokage-sama! Team Seven, here to report mission complete!"

Naruto grinned at seeing the Hokage—he had kind of missed the old man, what with not seeing him every day to hand out missions—but managed to keep any outbursts in check. The Hokage looked wearily at Kakashi.

"So how did it go? I'm assuming _something_ went wrong, because otherwise you wouldn't be trying to butter me up by being formal."

Kakashi laughed sheepishly, one hand behind his head. "Well...the short version is that the old man had neglected to tell us that he had a one-man economy hiring nukenin to take him out."

The Hokage groaned. "Is there anything that requires me to take action now?"

Kakashi shook his head.

The Hokage nodded in satisfaction. "Good. Then I look forward to your mission reports. They might make slightly more entertaining reading than the average."

At this Naruto yelped in indignation. "Wait a second, reports? We have to do them too?"

The Hokage looked at Naruto in a long-suffering fashion. "Yes, Naruto. You have to write a mission report. This is something you do after missions. D-ranks are considered trivial enough that your sensei just files one for all of you, but anything outside the village requires a mission report from each shinobi involved."

Naruto shuffled his feet. "But...but that's a lot of work! And it's boring!"

The Hokage sat back in his chair and sighed. "Consider it practice for being Hokage, Naruto. I spend most of my time doing paperwork, for better or worse. This is part of being a shinobi in a village just as much as fighting is." He turned back to the papers on the table in front of him. "Team Seven, dismissed."

* * *

It was later that evening when the Hokage, sitting in his office contemplating the merits of katon jutsu as applied to paperwork, heard soft footsteps tracking up the wall beneath the window of his office. He sighed—it was probably some guarding shinobi, come to ask him about a problem or alert him to something that the Hokage needed to take care of As Soon As Possible. Instead, he saw—

"Naruto? That's a new trick."

The blond-haired boy grinned, crouching on his windowsill. "Yeah, Kakashi-sensei taught us this in Wave cause we were gonna have to fight these scary Mist guys. It's fun!"

The Hokage looked sharply at Naruto, then forced himself to remember that the action was already resolved, and had apparently ended well enough. "Indeed? My anticipation of your mission report grows and grows."

Naruto pouted for a moment. "Yeah, yeah...." He perked up. "Oh! So, ojiisan, I was wondering something."

The Hokage raised an eyebrow and, after a moment's silence, prompted him. "Yes?"

"Well, I know usually we aren't supposed to leave the village without a mission or permission from you, but I was wondering if I could get permission to go outside sometimes to train."

The Hokage looked at him, startled. "What do you need to do that you can't do on the training grounds?"

"Well, uh, on the mission I figured out this technique that's really cool, but I don't want to do it too much on the training grounds cause it would, you know, kinda destroy them, and you'd probably make our team draw the missions to clean them up again. So I figured I'd go outside and just do it in the forest where no one cares."

"And what is this technique?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head. "Well, Kakashi-sensei called it _bunshin daibakuha_ or something like that, but I'd never heard anything about that. All I'm doing is like turning a shadow clone into an exploding tag."

The Hokage stared at Naruto. "You can do _bunshin daibakuha_?"

Naruto shrugged. "I guess I can, but I don't think it's really quite the same thing."

"Well, is it a shadow clone that can explode?"

"Yeah."

The Hokage sighed deeply. "Of all the people...Naruto, do I have to give you a lecture on safety in exploding clones?"

Naruto crossed his arms and gave the Hokage a self-righteous look. "Hey! I'm even asking for clear space to train it so I don't blow up the practice grounds! Why would you think I was irresponsible with that kind of thing? I never blew up anything with explosive tags!"

The Hokage chuckled faintly. "I suppose...All right, Naruto, I suppose that my dubiousness is more a result of holdover impressions from before you learned to make explosive tags. You say you want a place to practice this _daibakuha_?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, and I just figured I could go outside the walls and do it in the forest where no one cares."

The Hokage nodded. "Well, I have a better idea than that. Really, going outside the village is for missions, but we have a practice ground that you can use."

Naruto scratched his head. "Really? I didn't know we had one that was, you know, uh, expendable enough."

The Hokage chuckled. "Well, we do. But Naruto, it's a dangerous place. A big chunk of forest about twenty kilometers across, but it's designed as a sort of obstacle course for serious training exercises and survival tests, and we only really use it for that. So the plants, the animals, they're all rather dangerous and trying to kill you."

Naruto looked at him dubiously. "Really? And this is the best place?"

The Hokage nodded. "If you want to practice a very destructive technique, then yes. Naruto, let me speak. It's a dangerous place, but the danger is mostly concentrated in the inner portions of the forest. You can practice your technique, but don't go more than a kilometer into the forest away from the perimeter fence. Farther in...it's designed for team survival exercises, Naruto. Alone, even a jounin might have some trouble. So stay clear. Understand?"

Naruto nodded, with a slight hesitation that disappeared in moments. "Right! Thanks! Where is this place, ojiisan?"

"It's called Training Ground 44. It's on the maps of Konoha. Feel free to use it as you need, with the previous conditions."

Naruto grinned. "Got it!" And he walked out the window and down the wall.

* * *

Naruto arrived at the training field alongside Hinata, who had eagerly accepted his offer to train together again. He grinned at her as she split off from him to stand on the line, but she paused before taking her stance.

"Ah...Naruto-kun? Why...where did your jumpsuit go?"

Naruto glanced down. Instead of his trademark bright orange jumpsuit, he was wearing dark forest green cargo pants and a black T-shirt. In deference to his own color preferences, the T-shirt had a spiral of burnt orange on the front, but that was as much as Kakashi-sensei would let him wear. He laughed, one hand behind his head.

"Well, when we were on that mission I had to do some stuff like jumping around in the trees keeping watch, and I had to henge into something less conspicuous so that I wouldn't be visible from like a mile away. So then when we got back Kakashi-sensei said that he wouldn't be associated with someone who looked that obvious now that we were doing actual missions."

Hinata giggled. "I see." A slight smile remained on her face as she activated her eyes and took up the stance of the Hyuuga taijutsu, and Naruto grinned back. He took up a stance himself, but seeing her across from him, a strange apprehension shot through him, and he hesitated.

_Flashes of light...a deafening sound, a buffeting roar, and craters full of blood...._

He flashed back to himself at a concerned voice. "Naruto-kun? Are...you all right?"

Hinata was standing in her stance, but her face was concerned. He shook himself and nodded.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Hinata-chan. Just...I'm fine."

He readjusted his stance, which had lapsed when he lost concentration, and faced her again. The same apprehension came up, but he forced it down. _I'm not going to hurt her. I'm not even using anything dangerous. She can take my taijutsu just fine._

They moved as one, and clashed in a flurry of strikes. The Hyuuga had the best possible advantage in taijutsu; any contact could allow an attack, and if they were fighting all-out a single attack had the potential to pulp muscles and organs in instantly-incapacitating ways. In their spars, though, Hinata would hold back almost too much—a strike that would have put his arm out of commission for days would instead be only a minor, painful shock. Nevertheless, Naruto attempted to avoid all her strikes and counterattacks completely—no mean feat, made harder by Hinata's inhuman speed.

The fight had continued for several minutes when Naruto, three steps into a combination attack, found Hinata's block coming just a hair quicker than he had anticipated. He winced inwardly as her hand approached his arm, and instinctively yanked inside his mind. A door flew open, and boost shot through him.

The burst of speed allowed him to twist aside and continue the attack. He tagged her, harder than he had intended to with the boost, and she winced slightly as he extricated himself and reestablished his stance. He grinned at the success, but something was wrong.

Lines. Lines on the world, on the ground around them, the trees, the fence around the training grounds. Well enough, and he had become practiced at ignoring them. Lines on his hands, his clothes. Well enough. Lines, also, on Hinata's hands and face.

Naruto did not know he had shouted. He was quickly forcing the fox's chakra down, striking the door of the seal closed, but it was too late to avert the vision that his unfriendly mind presented him. He flashed back to the hospital, but this time it was Hinata falling apart, the lines on her flesh ripping her asunder, falling to the ground, and she did not rise, the illusion did not break. Then he remembered the bridge again, his clones detonating and destroying the crowd of mercenaries, while he stood, watching, his face a grim smile. And he saw it again...but instead, it was Hinata standing near a clone, staring at it with consternation in her face, and then it was interlacing its fingers and there was _light sound pressure_ and her mangled body lay fifty feet away.

He was crouched on the ground, his hands over his eyes, the darkness not helping as much as he thought it would, when he felt hands on his shoulders and a voice spoke from above him. "N-naruto-kun! Are y-you all right?"

He opened his eyes and looked up frantically, and she was standing there. _Alive. Not dead. She isn't hurt. I haven't...._ He supposed he had known that—he had not _seen_ her death, not the way he had seen people falling apart before he had managed to close off the eyes. It had been merely an imagining. A warning, he supposed.

She was still waiting for a reply. He spoke hurriedly. "Yeah...I'm just fine, Hinata-chan. Just..." He shook his head. "I'm sorry." He did not know whether he was apologizing for worrying her or for the disturbing visions in his head.

She seemed to accept that, and Naruto stood and shakily took up a stance. It quickly became obvious, however, that he could not continue the spar; though he would block and dodge as readily as ever, he flinched away from hitting her, and the openings left behind allowed her to tag him several times with notionally lethal blows. After another of these, Hinata stood back and bit her lip hesitantly.

"Ano...Naruto-kun...you do not seem to be doing so well."

Naruto sat down heavily and blew a sigh. "I know. I'm sorry, I'm not much use today." His voice was far more despondent than a mere bout of weakness would have justified, and Hinata, keen observer, of Naruto anyway, that she was, did not fail to pick up on it.

She took a hesitant step towards him. "Naruto-kun..." She took a breath and seemed to gather her courage. "What was that strange chakra you just used?"

Naruto looked up at her, startled. "Strange chakra?"

Hinata nodded quickly. "Yes...the seal on your stomach released it, and you got faster...but then you seemed to have a bad reaction to it, and now...what's wrong?"

Naruto dropped his head into his hands. He should have known better than to assume that Hinata didn't at least know something was unusual about him. He was constantly sparring with her while she used a bloodline that allowed her to see his chakra system and see through his clothes; if nothing else, she would have to have physically seen the seal.

He opened his mouth to begin the same explanation that he had given to Sasuke and Sakura, then closed it again. Tried again, and failed. It should not have been so difficult, but a creeping fear had come over him at the revelation that she could see the seal and the fox's chakra.

_What if she doesn't want anything to do with me anymore, after that? Who would want to befriend a demon?_

The Sandaime's reassurances, that day after he had first seen the lines, that he was not the demon, only its container, came to his mind, but doubts rose up to meet them. _Yeah, I'm not actually the demon, but it might be influencing me._ He remembered the blinding anger he had felt toward Haku when Sasuke had fallen, the corruption of the red chakra ripping through the cage of mirrors and the flesh of his enemy, only to stop when he had been jarred out of his rage. He remembered standing emotionless as a wave of his clones eliminated hundreds of mercenaries—men who might as well have been sitting ducks before the power of even a genin shinobi. _Was that me, or the fox?_

He had been silent for a moment too long. Hinata opened her mouth again, paused, and spoke with fear in her eyes. "Naruto-kun?"

Naruto sighed. "I'm sorry, Hinata-chan. I can't tell you. I just...." He trailed off.

Hinata nodded shakily. "I-it's all right, Naruto-kun. I...understand."

Naruto winced.

After another moment of silence, he stood. "I'm sorry, Hinata-chan, but I can't do much right now. I'll see you...later, I guess?" He made the statement a question, half prepared for her to repudiate him, but she instead nodded.

He jumped into the trees surrounding them and took off at a run.

* * *

Naruto landed in the middle of another training ground, one more remote and surrounded by trees. He dropped into a crouch, breathing heavily; he had been pushing himself hard, frustrated and angry with himself. After a moment's looking, he sat down on a nearby log and dropped his head into his hands, muttering curses against himself, the world, the fox, the seal, the Fourth, the lines, and everything else he could think of.

After he ran out of things to curse, which took rather a longer time than one would have expected, he sat dejectedly, running his conversation with Hinata over and over in his mind. One question haunted him: should he have simply told her about the fox?

_It's quite possible that she wouldn't have minded it. I mean, I'm_ pretty _sure it's not influencing me...and it's not like I've hurt anyone with it who didn't deserve to be hurt...._

_Haku,_ a treacherous voice whispered in his mind, and he winced.

_He didn't count. I didn't know it was him when I attacked him, and I stopped right afterwards. I_ will not _hurt my friends._ His mind went back to Hinata. _Do I need to worry about it? The only people who've hated me for it are people who didn't know anything else about me...it's not like Sasuke and Sakura started glaring at me after I told them._

The same voice whispered doubts into his mind. _But Sasuke wouldn't, would he? He respects strength, not goodness, not really. He sees you stronger than he and determines himself to surpass you, and that's all there is to it. And Sakura wouldn't go against Sasuke, not if he's already made his decision. Hinata isn't so limited._

Naruto growled in frustration, but he could not dispute the points that his subconscious was determined to make to him. He rallied in his defense. _But Hinata's a good person. She wouldn't hate someone for something that wasn't their fault. She wouldn't...._

The voice in his head was not silenced. _Yes, Hinata is a good person. But are you? And if she repudiated you when you told her, would it reflect on her...or on you?_

Naruto winced at the thought. The roiling frustration in his gut increased in intensity, and he stood with face clenched. He squared off into a stance, then ran through a series of attacks, yelling on the final blow. It only increased the pressure of his runaway emotions. He shouted again, and targeted a particular tree, pounding on it until his feet were sore and his knuckles and palms bled. The bark had shattered and splintered on the side facing him, but he still felt as if he was full of a furious energy that had to escape. Almost without noticing, he removed the blocks in his mind. Lines and points patterned the landscape, and with the boost his strength increased, each punch penetrating inches into the wood of the now-much-battered tree. It still was not enough. With a shout of frustration, Naruto crossed his hands, and eight shadow clones popped into existence in a rough circle around him, each perhaps fifty feet away among the trees. Naruto shouted incoherently, putting all his breath into the sound, and the clones mimicked him as they interlaced their hands and exploded.

Noise battered him, along with the remnants of the pressure waves from the explosions, and bits of wooden shrapnel cut shallowly into his hands and face. The feelings seemed to shock him out of the incoherent anger that had filled him, but what was left behind was a void. There was a deeper-than-usual cut on the back of his right hand; he looked at it dispassionately as it stopped bleeding, dried up, and closed itself, all within a minute or so. _Damned fox._ He glanced down at his T-shirt, and noticed the small slices cut into it by the same shrapnel. _Need to get a new one._

A voice came from behind him, though his yet-to-recover ears could not hear what it said. He turned around. Black, spiky hair, red eyes. He returned Sasuke's wave and pointed at his ears; Sasuke nodded in return and walked over to him.

He spoke more loudly, and Naruto could distinguish the words. "What's got you in the mood to blow up trees?"

Naruto glanced over into the forest, where some unlucky tree had fallen, the bottom of its trunk a mass of splinters. He winced. "Sorry, tree-san."

Sasuke rolled his eyes and repeated his question.

Naruto looked over at him and sighed. _Well, what the hell. He already knows about the fox, after all._ "I was sparring with Hinata and ended up using that boost that the fox gives me. And it turns out that, of course, she can see the seal through my shirt, and she saw the fox's chakra, and she asked me what it was."

Sasuke was, for some reason, now suppressing laughter. "And?"

Naruto looked darkly down at the forest floor. "I didn't tell her."

Sasuke found this even more amusing. "I presume you're afraid she'll get all scared and run off?"

Naruto gave him a mild glare. "That was the gist of it, yes. And you're not helping."

Sasuke stopped bothering to suppress his laughter. "Dobe, of all the people you know she's the one you should worry about doing that _least._ "

Naruto looked at him with sudden suspicion in his eyes. "You know something I don't, don't you."

"I'm not sure why you would bother to point that out, since it's so obviously and perpetually true."

Naruto took a halfhearted swing at him, but was not deflected. "Great. So is this going to be like the clones giving me their memories, where I'm missing something really obvious and you're going to tell me and make me feel stupid?"

Sasuke smiled beatifically at him. "No. This is where you're missing something really obvious, and I don't tell you because I enjoy watching you squirm."

Naruto suddenly gave Sasuke a much more serious glare. "Tell me. Now."

Sasuke was not intimidated. "Ah, but that wouldn't be any _fun._ " Naruto made a fist, and Sasuke continued. "In seriousness, it's not my secret to share. Figure it out yourself."

Naruto stared at him for a moment longer, but Sasuke didn't budge. "All right." He turned away.

Sasuke spoke from behind him. "I hesitate to ask in your current mental state, but do you want to spar?"

Naruto turned back and glowered at him. "I jump at the opportunity to beat your face in, teme."

Sasuke grinned. "If you can."

* * *

Team Seven stood at attention in the Hokage's Tower, in front of the mission assignments table. Kakashi had just announced them when the Hokage looked up, raising an eyebrow at Naruto.

"Naruto, I was quite startled when, not two days after you come to me specifically for advice on where to train your explosions that _wouldn't_ destroy anything, I get reports of you having done rather severe damage to Training Ground 14. Was there a particular reason for that?"

Naruto chuckled sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. "Uh, sorry, ojiisan. It was just a...bad moment."

The Hokage looked at him levelly. "I see. Well, since you didn't seem to do anything _dangerous_ , I suppose I can give you a pass on that. Kakashi!"

Kakashi maintained his rather-bored posture, and spoke casually. "Yes, Hokage-sama?"

"Team Seven is assigned to restore Training Ground 14 to useful status, including filling in holes and digging out the stumps of trees. This is a D-rank mission. Understood?"

Kakashi nodded as Sasuke and Sakura turned mild glares on Naruto. "Understood, Hokage-sama."

All four shinobi left as one.

* * *

Naruto, after taking a long shower to rid himself of sweat, clay, and other generic dirt (Kakashi had ruled that he was forbidden to use shadow clones to repair the field, as penance for destroying it), changed his clothes and went out, looking for a weapons shop whose owner had never thrown him out.

This took longer than he had expected; during his tenure at the Academy, he had pretty much canvassed the ones around his apartment, the Academy, and the Hokage's Tower nearby, and while some of them had tolerated his presence on a limited basis, he was always unceremoniously ejected if other customers entered the store. He eventually found himself on the other side of the village from his apartment, sniffing without much hope around the vicinity of the walled Hyuuga compound, when he saw a sign above a smaller shop with stylized crossed kunai over the inscription 'Higurashi Weapons'.

Having never seen or heard of that place before, he walked over to the storefront, which was mostly occupied by a large window showcasing a display of various weapons, including standard shuriken and kunai alongside several different styles of knives, a few short swords, kamas, and stranger weapons for which Naruto had no name. He gaped at it for a moment before entering at the door.

The shop was small, rather convoluted, and packed with weapons of types both common and obscure. The little desk just beside the door was occupied by a girl about his age, a Konoha hitai-ite around her forehead, her brown hair up in two round buns at the back of her head. She was sharpening a kunai on a stone embedded in the desk surface, but laid it aside on seeing him enter.

"Hello, welcome to Higurashi Weapons! Is there anything I can help you with?"

The words, while friendly enough, carried the definite tone of something said ten thousand times to ten thousand people without the slightest change. Naruto grinned.

"I think I'll just look around a little, thanks."

The girl smiled and picked up the kunai again. "All right! If there's anything you need help with, just ask!"

Naruto stepped past her into the shop. It was rather small and twisted about; the front of it was well enough illuminated by the windows, but behind a few shelves that light might as well have been nonexistent, and instead lamps burned in brackets scattered around the shelves. Naruto took a second look at one of those, and was startled.

_Oil lamps? What? Don't they have electricity?_

The shelves were covered in various weapons. Most of those on the front shelves were kunai, shuriken, or recognizable variants of either—he noticed a few of the fuma shuriken that Sasuke favored, and other, stranger things. One caught his eye—it was a small kunai with two sharpened prongs splitting off from the base of the blade, but what fascinated him was the yellow tag wrapped around the handle, covered in twisted sealing work. He glanced at the seals, but could not make head nor tail of them, and the kunai was under glass, so he could not get a closer look. With a mental shrug, he moved on. The shelves behind had more unusual things; there were various knives, a few short swords, but most of the items were things Naruto could not name, whose only obvious commonality was their intent to do others harm through blades or weight. As he moved deeper into the shop, the repetitive _shhhk_ of the girl's sharpening stone at the desk became muted, and he seemed to hear a rhythmic, slightly musical tapping from above.

He wandered about, fascinated, until he came across a section of shelf several rows back covered in various sorts of fuinjutsu. He saw several storage scrolls, whose only difference seemed to be their length and hence the number of individual seals on each, and a row of explosive tags, which were organized by yield. Naruto glanced over the seals on the tags, and found them to be fairly simple and standard, though not the same ones that he usually used for himself. He looked around for pricing information, and was stymied; none of the items, in fact, seemed to have any sort of price marked at all. He turned around and picked his way back out through the shelves to the door.

The girl at the desk, who for some reason looked vaguely familiar, turned to him. "Yes?"

Naruto smiled. "I'm looking for prices on a few things."

The girl stood and came out from behind the desk. "Well, our prices can be flexible depending on circumstance, but I'll give you first estimates, anyway." She lay the kunai she had been sharpening down in a box full of such kunai and followed Naruto back through the moderately-twisty path to the fuinjutsu scrolls.

When Naruto indicated the seals, the girl looked slightly chagrined. "Ah...I said that our prices were flexible, but unfortunately the prices on these really aren't, since we don't make them ourselves." She proceeded to quote a series of prices that startled Naruto immensely. The most expensive—the larger storage scrolls—cost some fifty thousand ryo on their own, and even the smallest exploding tags were twenty-five hundred or so. He suddenly gained a new perspective as to why the Academy lessons on the activation of such tags used them so stingily.

The girl was finishing up. "And finally," she said, bending down to indicate some blank scrolls near the bottom, "we have some sealing paper, though not that much, which is five thousand for these—" she indicated the smaller scrolls "—and seven thousand for these." This with a wave towards the larger ones. Naruto frowned and retrieved one of those, comparing it to the sealing scrolls.

"Why are the sealing scrolls so much more expensive, then? I mean, scribing the seals can't add that much extra cost, can it?"

The girl shrugged. "Well, charging up just two or three of those seals takes all the chakra your average ninja has, and it'll take them overnight at least to recharge. So making up one of those, that has twenty or thirty seals...it's at least a week of tiring work for a ninja who knows the seals and has a decent chakra capacity, which probably means one of your better chuunin. And they have better things to do, usually. So it's not cheap." She glanced at the visible holsters at Naruto's hip. "How do you not know this? You've never bought scrolls before?"

Naruto shook his head. "Never have. I made these myself, and they're just regular paper. I used one of the seals that drains off your chakra to keep your stuff in, so I just have to never leave them more than five feet away from me for more than a few hours."

The girl looked at him very dubiously. "You can't be more than a genin, if you were a chuunin at your age I'd have heard of you. So how is it that you can fight with that sort of drain on you? I'm _assuming_ that you're not just being an idiot, or your sensei would have shot it down."

Naruto grinned sheepishly. "Well, my sensei says that I have more chakra than the rest of the village combined, but that I shouldn't let it get to my head because I still can't beat him. So it isn't really a problem for me."

She looked mildly impressed, though only mildly. "Huh. So who are you?"

"Uzumaki Naruto. And I'd yell something here about how I'm going to be the next Hokage, but I've been trying to stop that lately."

The girl laughed at that, and gave him a grin. "Right. Well, ordinarily I'd say you didn't have a chance, but you apparently make your own seals and have more chakra than the rest of the village combined, so who knows. I'm Higurashi Tenten. You going to buy anything?"

Naruto grinned broadly. "You know, I think I have a different errand. How much do you pay the supplier for those?" He indicated the tags.

Tenten raised an eyebrow. "Not all that much less than we charge. We don't make much of a profit on them; most of our money comes from the stuff we make. We just have these for completeness' sake."

Naruto's grin only grew wider. "So given the name, I'm guessing your family owns the shop?"

Tenten looked slightly startled by the change in subject, but nodded.

"So is there someone around right now who can make decisions about buying stuff?"

Tenten looked even more startled at that, then started and grinned. "Yeah, my dad's upstairs. I'll go get him." She disappeared down a row that Naruto had not yet explored, and he heard a door scrape open. Shortly afterwards, the almost subliminal tapping from above ceased, and Tenten came back downstairs followed by an older man.

He had gray hair cut fairly short, but his face held a visible resemblance to the younger girl's, and when he noticed Naruto he suddenly stared at him with odd intensity. Naruto fidgeted under the look; it wasn't a glare, true, but he had much first-hand experience of people changing suddenly in their demeanor after recognizing him, and it usually immediately preceded a curse or an attempt at a blow. Not that civilians would have a chance to actually hit him, or tried anymore now that he wore a hitai-ite, but it became quickly old nonetheless.

This man, though, did not react so; instead, after a moment's assessing stare, his face turned thoughtful, and he bowed, just precisely as deeply as one should to greet a customer. "I welcome you. My name is Higurashi Kasai," he said, his voice deep and vaguely gravelly.

Naruto bowed back, not part of the usual protocol between tradesman and customer. "My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I am honored to make your acquaintance, Higurashi-san, and I have a proposal to make you." He forced down his more hyperactive instincts in favor of the memories of Iruka's attempts to instill in him a basic knowledge of manners—it was not particularly polished, but hopefully this man would not be offended.

Kasai looked rather surprised, and nodded. "Would you care to elaborate?"

Naruto swallowed, hastily organizing a minor speech in his head. "Several years ago, I was introduced to the study of fuinjutsu. However, I could never afford to buy scrolls or sealing paper, so until several weeks ago I was ignorant of the prices that fuinjutsu commanded. I believe that, uh, due to some special abilities I have," and here Kasai started and glanced at him significantly, "I can supply such products as sealing scrolls and exploding notes at a price much below that which seems to prevail among other suppliers."

Kasai was silent for a long moment before replying. "You have been using ordinary paper for your seals so far?"

Naruto nodded.

Kasai indicated one of the holsters at Naruto's waist. "I assume you made those scrolls?"

Naruto nodded again, wondering where this was going.

"May I see one?"

Naruto gulped, withdrew one of the scrolls, and took a step forward to hand it to the man. Kasai took it, and as soon as Naruto had withdrawn his hand he staggered almost imperceptibly. A small frown became visible in the lines on his forehead.

"How many seals are on this scroll?"

"Ah, I believe that one has eighteen, Higurashi-san."

"And you are able to fight with such a drain on your chakra?"

"I am." Ordinarily Naruto would have felt rather prideful about that, but at the moment he was too busy being nervous.

"I presume your...abilities include an abnormally high chakra capacity?"

"They do, Higurashi-san."

"How much so?"

Naruto thought furiously for just a moment. He really didn't want to get into a discussion about just how much the fox had affected him, and it might be nice to be able to surprise enemies in the future with the full extent of his stamina. "Uh, very. More than my sensei." That would impress, but didn't reveal his actual stupidly-high capacity.

It certainly seemed to have impressed Kasai. He stared at Naruto for a moment, then nodded. "I assume you know the seals that use sealing paper?"

Naruto nodded quickly. "Of course. I'm aware of the reasons why no one ever uses the plain-paper seals; I had to look them up specifically. The sealing versions are the standard, and they're in all the manuals."

Kasai held out the scroll to Naruto, who took it back with a sense of relief; apparently one that was mutual, as the older man's stance straightened subtly as if he had put down a weight. "Very well. And what would your price be for a fully-charged sealing scroll of, say, twenty-five seals?"

Naruto froze for a moment, surprised at the question, then answered slowly. "I would need to get the sealing paper, I think one of your larger scrolls of that would do, and you said those cost seven thousand. So it probably wouldn't be too much more than that. I know the seals pretty well, I can write one in just a minute or so, and I could charge them all in one sitting."

Kasai raised an eyebrow at this. " _Much_ more than your sensei, I see."

Naruto cringed momentarily at the slip, then tried to hide it; it did not escape Kasai, whose mouth quirked in slight amusement. "I will not repeat this conversation, nor its implications, to anyone in particular, Uzumaki-san."

Naruto was slightly embarrassed at being caught, but resisted the urge to rub his head. "Uh, thank you, Higurashi-san."

The man nodded, and moved with sudden decisiveness that Naruto would not have expected from his appearance. He walked quickly to the shelf of various sealed papers, and bent over to retrieve one of the blank scrolls from the bottom. Turning back to Naruto, he asked, "Are you able to create such a thing now?"

If the question about prices had surprised Naruto with its lack of dancing around, this one did so doubly. He was able to retain his composure, however. "I think so. Would the simple seals that you have on those ones suffice?" He indicated the very expensive sealing scrolls at the top of the shelf. "I know some better ones, but those are kind of harder to use and most people aren't expecting them."

Kasai seemed to be holding in his laughter. "The simple one is fine. How long will it take you?"

"Uh, about a half hour, I guess? If it's only twenty-five seals or so."

Kasai nodded. "Very well. I will advance you this scroll of sealing paper, because I wish to see your wares. If they are satisfactory, then I will buy back the scroll you make at whatever price we negotiate, less the price of the blank scroll. If not, you may consider it yours, for having the temerity to attempt to sell fuinjutsu as a genin."

This was going _quite a bit_ faster than Naruto had envisioned, but since most of the extra padding he knew went into agreements like this one had to be made up of excessive courtesy, discussions of the welfare of the participants' various family members, and tea ceremony, he wasn't complaining. "All right. How many seals do you want on it?"

"As many as you think will fit." He led Naruto out to the more open front of the store again, Tenten trailing along behind, and pointed him to a table with a few chairs at it. "You may work there. Is the light sufficient?"

"Yeah, it's just fine." Naruto sat down at the table and looked around, then retrieved a brush and ink from inside one of his own scrolls and placed them next to the blank one. He glanced enquiringly at Kasai, and at the man's gesture of _get on with it_ began to scribe.

Both Tenten and Kasai watched him avidly for the first few seals, but Tenten quickly became bored watching what was, at its base, no more interesting than someone else doing calligraphy lessons and went back to her desk at the front, where she continued sharpening kunai. Kasai continued to watch; Naruto was mostly concentrating on the seals, but he looked up occasionally, to see the man still watching him with a sort of bloody-minded patience, as if he was searching avidly for any sign of less diligence on the later repetitions of the task. Naruto was very careful to keep his brush-strokes even and his spacing precise.

It took him some thirty-one minutes to scribe the scroll entire, which ended up holding twenty-eight seals. As he put away the ink and brush, Tenten noticed the break in the rhythm and looked up; Kasai, of course, was still staring at him. Naruto went back to the first seal on the scroll, which was long dry by now, and made a half-ram with one hand, laying the other on the edge of the seal. Charging a seal was rarely a complicated business, as usually the seal could very well shape the chakra itself, thank you, and needed nothing of the sealer's interference by molding anything. It simply took an influx of chakra—perhaps equivalent to what was needed to create five shadow clones—and the seal was made.

He barely noticed the drain, and went quickly on to the next. Then the next. Unlike writing the seal, charging it was only a five-second procedure, and he finished the entire scroll within minutes. The ink on the last of the seals was just dry by the time he reached it; he charged it just as the others, then rolled up the scroll and presented it to the man.

Kasai accepted it with a nod, and unrolled it to the first of the identical seals. He held out a hand backwards, in a gesture that confused Naruto until Tenten grabbed one of the kunai she had just been sharpening and handed it to him hilt first. His hand came back around, and with a flash of chakra the kunai vanished into the first seal. The man stared at it for a moment, then unsealed it, catching the kunai before it fell.

He nodded and looked back up. "It appears to be satisfactory at first glance. I will keep it for three days to test it. Come back then, sometime in the morning. We will discuss it further."

Kasai spoke no more, in what was clearly a dismissal. Naruto stood, and bowed. "Thank you, Higurashi-san. I look forward to seeing you." He turned to the door. Tenten was still behind the desk, watching him with a grin on her face.

"Interesting, very interesting! I congratulate you, Naruto-kun, he usually doesn't achieve that pinnacle of backhanded politeness except with other blacksmiths. I look forward to seeing you." Though the latter was clearly a half-mocking reference to his own formal words of a moment ago, they were spoken with a smile and a wink. Naruto just nodded and stepped out the door. He wasn't sure he was up to reconciling Kasai's gruffness with...that. Whatever it was.

* * *

Naruto had expected to be nervous throughout the three days that Higurashi Kasai had specified, but the daily Mandatory D-Ranked Grunt Work combined with occasional spars with Sasuke and even one day fiddling around with his Daibakuha in the outskirts of Training Ground 44—and it had _not_ reassured him about the safety of that area that the barbed-wire-topped fence all around the outside of it was repeatedly labeled "Forest of Death"—had managed to keep his mind off of it. Now, however, he was fully as nervous as he had expected, more than he had ever been before an Academy test. This was more like how he felt when he wondered if Hinata would wish to stop associating with him if he told her about the fox, if less so. He had liked Higurashi Tenten, who he remembered after a day's thinking about it had been in the Academy class ahead of him and seen him in the hallways on occasion, and her father, while gruff and rather intimidating, had seen him, the demon container, and given him a chance. Their good opinion was important to him.

Kasai's somewhat unspecific "sometime in the morning" had not helped his nervousness. He hadn't wanted to show up so early that he was disturbing the sleep or the breakfast of anyone at the shop, and he knew that civilian schedules were typically several hours ahead of shinobi ones as far as when they felt it appropriate to rise in the morning. But Tenten was a shinobi, probably a genin like him, and Kasai showed every sign of being a retired one; the fact that he had enough chakra for his sealing scroll to latch onto and drain power from indicated that, let alone his familiarity with both fuinjutsu and weapons. So maybe they were used to early mornings. And he didn't want to show up later than expected and leave the impression that he was (shudder) like Kakashi.

In the end, he decided to arrive at around ten in the morning, which was sufficiently early to definitely remain 'morning' while also making sure that the shop would have gotten its usual morning routine underway. He had had to beg Kakashi for the day off from D-rank missions; Kakashi had agreed finally, only to announce that the whole team would be taking the day off—it being horribly unfair, of course, that Sasuke and Sakura be forced to complete a D-rank without him—and, in fact, would be doing a special training course, which Naruto would be missing. His admonishment to Naruto had been to come back as soon as possible, "so you don't get too far behind." Naruto was still mildly fuming about that one.

He paused at the door to the familiar building, considered knocking, then decided it was stupid to knock at the front door to a shop. As he walked in, Tenten, again at the front desk, looked up with a smile.

"Hi there! My dad's been expecting you. Don't expect him to show it when you're around, but he's quite pleased."

Naruto grinned back, relieved. "Good to hear that, I suppose. Is he...." He looked around, not seeing the man.

"Oh, he's upstairs. Like usual, unless I'm with my team. He doesn't like dealing with customers much, and he says we make more money when I do it. I'll just go get him."

"Thank you," said Naruto. He remained standing, feeling rather awkward, as Tenten moved with the same mildly-hyperactive energy that he had noted three days ago back into the depths of the store where lurked the stairs to above. It took only moments for her to return, Higurashi Kasai following behind her.

He walked up to Naruto and bowed slightly as Tenten returned to the front desk. Tellingly, this time it was not the deeper, vaguely self-effacing bow directed from a shopkeeper to his customers—which was always laced with some degree of more or less hidden condescension to the recipient as an outsider—but the shallower bow between equals. Naruto returned it, and he gestured to a seat at the same table where Naruto had made up the sealing scroll three days before. Naruto sat, and so did Kasai.

Kasai pulled a scroll from somewhere behind him and set it on the table. It was not until he opened it that Naruto recognized it as the one he had made. "I have examined this scroll," he said. "I find its quality to be acceptable."

Naruto forced down a sudden desire to yell in joy, and wondered why he had been so nervous even after Tenten had basically told him that it had passed. Kasai was a _good_ negotiator.

He was also still speaking. "Having established this, it falls now to us to determine the price that you will charge for this and further such merchandise, and the amounts that you can provide."

Naruto spoke slowly. "Well, I can probably make like three of those in a day while I'm still doing missions and such, and that's mostly the time it takes to write out the seals. I didn't figure that you were selling all that many of them."

"Indeed," said Kasai. "However, I anticipate that customer demand for such items will rise dramatically if, as I assume you intended, we begin selling them at a significant discount from the usual prices of those items."

Naruto was suddenly nervous. "Well, you say dramatically...how dramatically are you talking about? Because I'm not going to suddenly start just making seals for a living. I'm still a shinobi, and I've got training and missions and such."

"Indeed. Demand may increase greatly, but you will of course make as many as you wish to make. There may be some competition over your shipments, but it should not prove a great problem. However, I believe that, once some time has passed to allow word of lower prices to spread, you will be able to sell as much as you wish to, and should you ever require more money than usual you would simply need to make more scrolls and tags that week." Kasai shrugged. "You should at least be aware of the possibility. I assume you are also capable of making exploding tags?"

Naruto grinned. "Yeah, I think you could assume that."

An almost imperceptible smile crossed Kasai's face. "Very good. Now we come to the issue of prices."

Naruto shrugged uncomfortably. "Well, you were selling these things for fifty thousand, and I guess that was about what you were paying to whoever you get them from now?"

Kasai nodded. "Less a small profit, yes. I believe the cost in bulk from the usual suppliers is about forty-five thousand ryo."

"All right, well, I don't need anywhere near that much, but I'd like to make some money. Minus the cost of the sealing paper...I guess something like ten or twelve thousand per would do?"

Kasai raised both eyebrows, and there was visible surprise in his expression, which Naruto even from his brief acquaintance could tell was exceptional. "Ah...that is your beginning offer, Uzumaki-san?"

Naruto realized his mistake—in such a meeting, it would of course be the standard to propose a price far above what one actually wanted, in hopes of finding how much the buyer would pay. He sighed.

"I'm probably not going to change that much. Yeah, about twelve thousand. I don't want to go any lower than that, because copying out the same seal over and over is really boring and I want to make some money off of it."

Kasai nodded slowly, getting over his surprise. "That is...an exceptionally generous offer, Uzumaki-san. You realize that you could more or less name your own price, below the current accepted value?"

Naruto shrugged. "Sure I probably could, but I just really don't care. I'm just trying to make some money off this, not start up a new supplier and make _as much money as possible_. I have other things to do with my time."

Kasai raised one hand to cover his mouth, as if concealing laughter. "Indeed. Very well, Uzumaki-san, that price is more than fair. Do I understand that you wish us to consider this as the first sale?" He indicated the scroll still on the table.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, that's fine. Uh, I guess you want all the same stuff you're selling now?"

Kasai nodded in return. "Indeed." He was doing something with his hands under the table, and finishing, laid a short stack of bills next to the sealing scroll, which he returned to wherever he had produced it from. Naruto reached for the bills and pocketed them—it being gauche to count them in the presence of the other party. Kasai inclined his head.

"That is five thousand. I deducted the price of the blank scroll from the cost. Do you have a way to acquire blank sealing paper in bulk?"

Naruto shook his head.

"Very well. We can supply that. When can we expect your first delivery?"

They spent the next few minutes determining a delivery schedule and making polite noises at each other. Naruto finally stood up from the table with a sense of relief, and bowed to Kasai, who stood as well.

He was about to leave when the door creaked open. He was still in the process of turning around when an exuberant voice made itself known behind him.

"Tenten, my most youthful teammate! The time that was agreed on has come! Let us go to the training grounds that we may stoke the fires of our YOUTH!"

...wait, _what?_

His first expression, on turning fully around, was _green_. His second impression was _eyebrows_. That was all he had time for before the very strange person who had entered the shop noticed him.

"I see that you are not alone! I greet you, fellow shinobi of Konoha, and wish you well in the pursuit of youthful vigor!"

Naruto opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He closed it again after it occurred to him that he probably looked stupid. The person in front of him had black hair in a bowl cut, which he _had_ to be treating somehow to look that glossy, and he wore a one-piece forest-green jumpsuit of some sort of stretchy fabric, with a hitai-ite around his waist and, of all things, orange leg-warmers. He was smiling toothily at Naruto, the sunlight coming in the window almost glinting off his teeth, and extending one arm in a thumbs up.

Naruto decided to stop asking himself questions like _what?_ or _why is he wearing that?_ or _who is this person?_ , and just go along with it.

"Uh, hello, there, uh...?"

Tenten, who had gotten up from the desk, was laughing into her hand. "Ah, Lee, this is Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto, Rock Lee, my teammate."

Naruto glanced between the two of them quizzically several times before replying. "Very good to meet you, Lee-san."

"And likewise you, Naruto-kun! I am ever grateful to have made your acquaintance!"

...Well, he seemed likable enough, if _very_ intense. Naruto wondered if he had ever been that bad from someone else's point of view.

Tenten smiled at him. "I've got to go, Naruto-kun. I guess I'll see you soon."

Naruto grinned back a little shakily. "I guess so."

Both Tenten and Lee walked out the door, and Naruto followed a moment after. He turned the opposite way as they, hoping to find the rest of his team soon enough that Kakashi wouldn't rib him too badly about missing training.

* * *

Time passed, as time has a habit of doing. Perhaps a month had past after they returned from the Land of Waves before things started picking up again.

It was a subtle thing, at first. The village seemed more bustling all of a sudden, more crowded, and the D-ranks they were assigned as genin had more and more to do with repairing the less-used pathways and roads from the wear of an influx of traffic. The sense of urgent vibrancy only grew over the week after it became noticeable, and a quiet tension was perceptible below it. Of course, none of Team Seven knew what was happening, in particular, but a sense of something happening was there. So tensions among the team were rather high when the encounter took place.

They were returning from the Hokage's Tower after reporting completion of the day's D-rank. Kakashi, as usual, had shunshinned away to somewhere obscure immediately after the Hokage dismissed him; the genin had left more conventionally, but had not yet split up for their usual afternoon activities, when they heard a commotion at a crossroads a few hundred feet away. With an exchange of glances they moved toward it in concert. Naruto looked ahead, and saw three unfamiliar figures in a parody of a standoff with three very familiar ones. It was merely a parody of a standoff, however, because the three familiar figures were Sarutobi Konohamaru and the two Academy students who followed him around and occasionally conspired in his 'Annoy The Boss' ploys, and the three unfamiliar ones—shinobi, from their stances—all stood at least a head or two above them.

Naruto quickened his pace, hoping to prevent Konohamaru from bothering anyone else too much, only to see one of the unfamiliar ones, taller than he and in a hooded black sweatshirt with what looked like cat ears, pick up the younger boy by the front of his shirt and start menacing him.

Naruto let out a yelp of indignation at this and sped up further. Fortunately, they were nearly at the crossroads now, and he was easily in position to come up to the confrontation from the side.

"Hey! Could you put him down?" he said, trying to maintain a polite tone and mostly succeeding.

The taller boy turned toward him with a sneer of disdain. Naruto was startled to see that his face was painted in odd patterns of a striking purple color. "Hey, the brat ran into me. He needs to be taught a lesson."

Konohamaru did not help the situation—he was squirming back and forth, and when he noticed Naruto standing there burst out in a train of pleas for 'the Boss' to help him. Naruto basically ignored him in favor of his captor, who had a forehead protector bearing the insignia of Sunagakure sewn to the front of his hood. Naruto mentally revised the threat level of the encounter upward, for the moment ignoring the little voice that was wondering what the heck Suna-nin were doing in the middle of Konoha.

The other shinobi turned back and gave Konohamaru a mild shake—nothing significant at all, but he needed to get Konohamaru out of the way if this escalated into a fight. He stopped, clasped his hands in a ram, and focused on Konohamaru with a glare of concentration. With a puff of smoke, suddenly Konohamaru was slowly wobbling from side to side ten feet away, and Naruto faced the Suna shinobi, one hand on his collar.

Naruto, who had been expecting it, broke the loosened grip without issue. This drew a snarl from the other boy, and a bad-tempered punch, which Naruto blocked. He stepped back, hoping to let the issue lie, when he saw one of the other two—a girl, blonde and even taller, with a strange large metal _thing_ across her back—take a step forward. He leveled an intent stare at both of them, and yanked out blocks within his mind lest he need to boost quickly. A familiar pattern of points and lines covered all in sight, but he did his best to ignore them.

As it turned out, the taller—presumably older—girl simply placed a hand on the cat-ears' shoulder and pressed down slightly, and with a growl he backed down. The blonde girl, also wearing a Suna hitai-ite, stared at Naruto as intently as he did at her, but spoke first to her teammate.

"Hey, don't get in fights. And you," and here her target was unmistakably Naruto, "don't be so quick to make hostile movements! You'll get yourself in a situation some day you can't get out of."

Naruto bristled. "Hey, he was going after a Konoha citizen!"

The face-painted boy spoke this time. "He ran into me! I wasn't going to hurt him, but this is a shinobi village, pal! We deserve—"

"Shut up."

This voice was new, and not even very loud, but it cut across the other boy's voice like a knife, and he cut it off instantly. The third of the three strange figures was approaching from behind the other two, this one just shorter than Naruto, bright red hair, a strange sort of pack or something across his back, and a character partly visible tattooed on his forehead. He did not seem particularly menacing, but the other two Suna shinobi were staring at him with fear. A few grains of sand drifted past on the wind, something Naruto would never have noticed but for the tension of the situation, and if he wasn't mistaken—had the face-painted boy _flinched?_

By this time, Sakura and Sasuke had come up alongside, and were staring at the Suna shinobi. Sakura began to say something—mostly likely along the lines of "we shouldn't be fighting"—but the red-haired Suna-nin cut her off as well, with the same "Shut up."

As he said it, a vaguely disturbingly familiar feeling stirred around the other boy, and he felt a shift, or something, in the reservoir of the fox's chakra behind the seal. And, if he wasn't completely mistaken, there was an undertone of dark laughter, as if—as if the _fox_ found something about the situation highly amusing.

The red-haired boy turned to Naruto and spoke only three words. "Don't bother us." Then he stepped to the side and walked past Naruto, seemingly completely ignoring everyone else in the world.

Naruto took a step to the side to keep the boy in his field of view. Something about him was _intensely_ creepy, something tied up in the fact that he had spent the littlest possible number of words on each of his messages. As if he considered all the others so far beneath his notice as to be nigh unto the ants.

The other two Suna-nin followed him, and it might have blown over, except for Sasuke. He took a few steps, coming alongside Naruto, and hailed the other group. "Wait."

Both the blonde girl and the hooded boy turned back to see him; the red-haired boy simply stopped, and completely ignored him. Sasuke spoke assuredly.

"Identify yourselves. What are Suna-nin doing traipsing around Konoha?"

The two who were acknowledging Sasuke's existence exchanged looks, as if in silent but highly visible comment on the questioner's mental acuity, and then the girl replied. "We are here to participate in the Chunin Exam. Temari."

The boy in the hood spoke. "Kankurou."

There was silence for a moment, then the red-haired boy spoke, though he still did not turn. "Sabaku no Gaara. If you bother us I'll kill you."

All three Konoha genin stared at the unstable Suna-nin with varying degrees of horror and uneasiness, but the Suna genin took the lack of reply as understanding. They turned back to walk down the street, and Team Seven could only watch behind.

* * *

When they cornered Kakashi about it the next morning—he had been roundly impossible to find any earlier—he admitted it cheerfully. "Yeah, the Chunin Exams this summer are happening here in Konoha. They go on a rotation of the five great villages, and it's our turn."

"So that's why there are foreign shinobi and civilians around, and there's all this tension..." murmured Sakura. The other two were not making such connections. On hearing Kakashi's explanation, both had had some variation of the same reaction: staring at the ground or their clenched fists for several moments, then slowly looking up at each other, their different faces mirroring the same fierce grin. Kakashi chuckled quietly at the sight.

"So, do you want to compete?"

All three genin looked at Kakashi with varying degrees of surprise and disbelief. He seemed to ignore their reactions, but carefully pulled three sheets of paper from...somewhere, that sort of personal dimensional storage space that Kakashi seemed to have available at all times, and separated them fastidiously, handing one to each genin. They glanced back and forth between the sheets and Kakashi, their expressions shading between eagerness and mild worry (which was mostly Sakura).

It was also Sakura who first raised a question. "Ah...Sensei, isn't the average age for chunin promotion somewhere around sixteen? Isn't it a bit early for us?"

Kakashi chuckled. "Yes, but that's the average age at which to pass the test. The vast majority of genin take it a few times before passing. And we have an advantage, with the test in Konoha; it'll be safer here than, say, in Iwa, which is a good thing for a rookie team taking the test. It's quite rare, you know, that a rookie team will. This generation looks to be exceptional." He clammed up after that for a moment, not acknowledging Sasuke's sudden calculating look. "So, would you three like to compete? It'll be a valuable learning experience, though you're quite unlikely to pass the first time. If you want to, just fill out those forms there and tell me next time we meet."

Of course, when Naruto later got around to looking at the dates on the forms, he groaned. Their annoying sensei had given them the offer with less than a week's notice.


	10. Tests

They arrived at the test building, one of the auxiliaries off the Hokage's Tower, at half past eight that morning, half an hour before the time indicated on the paperwork. The building was three stories tall and had windows all in rows along the sides, in standard office building style, but it was still dwarfed by the Tower next door to it. The team walked in through the main doors into a high-ceilinged atrium with a balcony running around the wall a floor above. Naruto glanced around, looking for a staircase, and indicated a door in one corner.

Sakura had her entry form out and was reading it. "We need room 301, that'll be on the third floor," she said, following the other two to the door. It led to an echoing stairwell, lights running up and down the bottoms of the flights above to give them light. As they trooped up the stairs, however, Naruto felt a sudden sense of minor disorientation come over him—he felt a little strange—it passed.

He opened the door at the top of the stairs, a sign to the side saying 'THIRD FLOOR'. Both Sasuke and Sakura walked through, but Sasuke was glancing around nervously. He apparently felt something wrong. Naruto had learned to trust Sasuke's instincts—he had sure enough found out enough times that _he_ couldn't trick him—and reminded himself to stay on guard as well.

They walked down the hall toward a crowd of people. There was a clamor as of many voices speaking frantically, and Naruto frowned. Would that be normal for the sign-in to a test? For that matter, why were so many people hanging around outside the door?

Both questions were answered when Naruto saw the door itself. Two rough-looking older genin had planted themselves in front of it, and someone Naruto didn't know had just fallen back away from the door, his face red as if from a blow. One of the two had just knocked him back; the other one looked around with a mildly sadistic grin.

"Hey, don't be mad!" he said, his tone of false pity. "We're doing you kids a _favor_. People _die_ in these exams. There's no way you're ready yet! Just go home and do your stupid D-ranks like good genin!"

Naruto scowled, fumed, and prepared to storm forwards and introduce the bullying seniors to his fists, but Sasuke's hand on his arm stopped him. "Wait a moment," he said, a frown on his face, his eyes red and black. "There's something wrong. There's a genjutsu on this whole floor—we're actually on the second floor, it caught us when we went up the stairs."

Naruto straightened and looked at the other boy quizzically. "Huh? Oh! That's...really weird." He formed a half-ram seal in front of his face and spiked his chakra, forgoing the usual verbal exclamation to avoid attracting attention. With a strange jerk, he felt something shift, and looking back at the room, he saw that the marker above it now read 201, instead of 301. He glanced at the crowd around the door.

"Must be part of the exam." Then a grin came over his face, and he spoke while suppressing laughter. "So those two bullies are just keeping people out of the trap? Hah. Idiots. They think they're so much better."

Sasuke shook his head. "They're not what they seem. I think maybe they're under henge. Maybe they're proctors who are part of the trap?"

Realization came over Naruto's face. "Oh! So it's a what-do-you-call-it, a honeypot. Take up people's time here, and anyone who gets distracted enough to miss the actual start time upstairs gets disqualified."

Sasuke nodded. Sakura, behind him, had long since broken herself out of the genjutsu, and turned back to the stairwell with an inquiring look at the boys. Sasuke made as if to follow her, but Naruto waved for them to stop, and turned back to the crowd. Sasuke looked at him, confused.

"What are you doing? Just leave them there. It's part of the test, no point breaking it."

Naruto sighed. "Few friends I saw. Don't want to just leave them." He walked towards the crowd, aiming for Tenten and her teammate Lee, who he saw at the fringe of the group. Coming up behind her, he laid a hand on her shoulder, and was rewarded by a remarkably quick turnaround and a kunai in her other hand.

She relaxed when she saw him, and grinned. "Hey, Naruto-kun! You taking this test, as well?"

Naruto nodded. "So, I think you might want to do a dispel right now," he said, not giving any further details. Tenten frowned at him, but did it, sharply muttering "Kai!" under her breath. She glanced around, startled, then laughed.

"Hah. Part of the test?"

Naruto nodded. "So we figure."

Tenten turned to Lee, beside her, and yanked him around so that he faced her. He took a breath, visibly about to start in on something involving youth, but she preempted him by shoving a half-ram in his face and hitting him with a dispel. He jumped, looked around, then recognized Naruto.

"Ah! It is you, Naruto-kun! I take it that you are also planning to compete in this youthful endeavor?"

Naruto nodded, suppressing his still-instinctive reaction to anything Lee did, which was basically akin to that of a rabbit which got in the way of a kunai. After seeing some of Lee's practices and contrasting his competence as a shinobi with his...creative affect and image, he had come to the tentative conclusion that he acted so strange specifically in order to mess with people, and he was damned if he would do just what Lee expected him to. "Come on. Don't make a lot of noise." He beckoned them towards the door, where Sasuke and Sakura were waiting impatiently. They followed him to the stairwell, and Tenten made a double take at the sign by the door on the stairwell side, which now read 'SECOND FLOOR'. She laughed rather self-consciously.

"We should have waited for Neji, he wouldn't have gotten fooled. Oh, well. Thanks for the tip, Naruto-kun. I guess we'll go downstairs and find him."

Naruto nodded and waved them goodbye as they turned to go down the stairs. Team Seven continued up the stairwell to the next floor, which was actually marked as the third. When Sasuke tried the door, however, it was locked.

He frowned. "Why is the door locked? Is it a test of our lock-picking abilities?"

Naruto shook his head, pointing at the keyhole, which had a thin circle of intricate characters around it. "I wouldn't try it, Sasuke. Standard security seals, they'd zap you good."

Sasuke nodded. "Which doesn't help much."

Sakura had been staring at the door with a thoughtful expression on her face. "Um, I would guess that it's to reinforce the genjutsu downstairs. So anyone who counted more carefully and missed the sign would think they had gone too far, and go back down. I bet that if we were still under that genjutsu, this would say 'roof access' or something."

Sasuke glanced at her measuringly, then nodded. "Makes sense. Is there another stairwell, maybe?"

"Let's see," said Naruto, turning around and leading them back down.

* * *

The atrium was as empty as it had been before. The hallway that provided access to the remainder of the first floor was across the empty space from the door to the front stairwell, and Team Seven moved toward it in unison without any need for indications. They were stopped midway by a shout.

"Uchiha Sasuke! Will you listen to me?"

They turned as one to look up at the balcony, where the boy in green who Naruto had gotten out of the genjutsu was standing with an intense look on his face. Sasuke replied, bemused. "Um, sure?"

The other genin—Lee, his name was—leapt over the railing of the balcony and dropped gracefully to the floor some way off. "Uchiha Sasuke!"

"You said that," he pointed out, diverting an apparently forthcoming rant from Lee. The green-clad genin stopped, then shook a fist at him, shouting. "Augh! You are almost as cool and hip as Gai-sensei's eternal rival, Kakashi! I disparage your attitude!"

Sasuke glanced aside at Naruto, who was unabashedly amused. "Is this guy for real?"

"He is," said Naruto. "And yes, this is the way he acts all the time."

Sasuke shook his head. "What is it that you want, Lee?"

"Uchiha Sasuke!" he shouted again, causing Sasuke to roll his eyes. "You are renowned as a genius among your generation!"

"Well, yes?"

"I want you to fight me! I will prove for once and all that the genius of youthful hard work is superior to the genius of...genius!"

_What?_ Sasuke was about to reply when Naruto spoke up. "Really, Lee, do we have to do this now? We're going to be late."

"Ah, I respect your youthful determination to arrive on time for the Chunin exam, Naruto-kun! But I must prove the superiority of the genius of hard work!"

Naruto rolled his eyes, and turned to Sasuke. "You may want to pass on this one, Sasuke. I'm pretty sure you can't beat him, and he's liable to beat the crap out of you proving it."

Sasuke stared at him. "Naruto, are you sure you're not just in some sort of trauma-induced denial from our last twenty or so spars? Or have you just forgotten them?"

Naruto waved his hands theatrically. "Details, details. Dratted cheater eyes," he muttered under his breath. "But really, even with the Sharingan you probably can't beat him in a spar. You could probably catch him with a fireball, but that's more serious than I think we want this to get."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Dobe, the only people I'm confident could beat me in taijutsu right now are jounin. Or maybe Hyuuga. You think this kid's that good?"

"He's older than us, you know."

"Details."

"And no, I don't think he's as good as a jounin, but I do think you're an arrogant bastard with too good an opinion of yourself, and he's good enough to beat you pretty easily."

Sasuke smirked. "Prepare to be amazed."

He turned back to Lee, who had been watching the byplay. "Sure, I'll fight you. Shouldn't take too long."

Lee smiled, showing far too many teeth. "Indeed I believe you are correct, but I have the impression that you are expecting a different outcome from me!" He planted his feet, taking a stance which Sasuke had never seen before—it was certainly very different from his own Uchiha taijutsu, or the bastardized Academy style that Naruto used—and made a come-hither gesture with his right hand. Sasuke smirked and took his own stance, activating his Sharingan. The world slowed itself down, and Sasuke charged in slow motion, his eyes giving him plenty of time to ensure that each step was precise and measured, defended against any quick tripping or sweeping techniques that an opponent might attempt. He let fly a testing punch, intending to analyze the way this strange opponent blocked and perhaps take advantage of an opening in the defense. The punch moved in slow motion, as usual, aimed just precisely at the other genin's solar plexus. His block began, and Sasuke had a perfect view of the other boy moving with truly uncanny speed to block the punch straight down before Sasuke could retract his arm and retaliate with a punch at his sternum. It was too fast. Sasuke could not block it, and he had barely begun to fade backwards and minimize its effect when it landed. It _hurt_ , far more than any blow anyone had ever landed on him since his eyes had activated, and he stumbled several steps back, sputtering to regain his breath, and watched Lee recover in slow motion. All the while, the uncanny grin never left his face.

"Are your eyes helping you, Uchiha Sasuke?" said the boy. The Sharingan did nothing to improve or analyze what he heard, and it was an extremely strange effect to watch his lips moving in effective slow motion while he heard his voice at normal speed.

He shook it off. "I suspect I would do worse without them." He would have to watch this one carefully—he was even faster than Naruto was when he pulled out the stops and used his strange demon-induced boost. Stronger, too, if that punch was any indication. Deciding that caution was indicated, Sasuke took a defensive stance and let Lee come to him. Lee deduced his intentions in only a few seconds, and his grin grew wider, if that was possible.

"You are on the defensive! I have gained the advantage through the power of my YOUTH!" With that, he charged in, again far faster than Sasuke could begin to react to. He saw the punch coming almost a second before it hit, and launched himself backwards, but still took the end of the blow, which caught his unbalance and knocked him over. It took a quick backward roll to regain his equilibrium, which found Lee standing again in his stance, still with the same grin on his face. Sasuke was dead certain, with the speed that the genin had demonstrated, that had he wished to press his advantage and utterly destroy him while he was off-balanced, he could have. He ground his teeth. _He's PLAYING with me!_

He took up the stance again and blew a deep breath, forcing himself calm. All the kami knew that getting angry had never done anything helpful when he was surrounded by grinning Naruto clones. Then he focused on Lee again, just in time to see him begin another charge.

This time, Sasuke had a plan. He was dodging aside even as Lee began to move, and though Lee adjusted slightly, he had no Sharingan to increase his perceptions; he was in many ways moving too fast for even himself to track. Sasuke still took a punishing blow to the chest, made worse by his own positioning, but he dealt in return a hard strike to the side of Lee's head, lent extra force by the velocity of Lee's charge. Sasuke fell over sideways in an undignified heap, but managed to keep an eye on Lee, and saw him do much the same, sliding along the floor almost ten feet with his momentum.

Of course, he immediately bounced up as if the strike meant nothing. As Sasuke got to his feet rather more slowly, he saw that Lee's omnipresent smile had finally been wiped from his face; he had on quite a serious expression, albeit one made comical by his ridiculous eyebrows. It did not take much of an effort for Sasuke to avoid laughing; the memory of this shinobi's ridiculous speed and strength was fresh.

"The Sharingan is indeed a powerful weapon!" said Lee, in the same sort of perpetual shout that he had been using throughout their encounter. "To land such a strike on me with only that level of speed! I can see why you are hailed as a genius! But now I will show you the genius of hard work!"

Sasuke did not have much time to wonder what he was talking about before Lee brought his hands together before his chest, though not in any seal that Sasuke had ever seen. "Kaimon: KAI!" he barked. Then, something happened—his movements became different somehow, his stance both tensing and relaxing at the same time. And this time, when he charged at Sasuke, he was moving at least three times as fast as he had been, almost fast enough to blur even with the Sharingan; certainly Naruto and Sakura would see only a flash and wonder what had happened.

He could do nothing before Lee ended his motion just in front of him, ducked low on one foot, and slammed a _very painful_ kick into his stomach, one which launched him into the air on a trajectory to peak around the level of the balcony and crash to the ground twenty feet away. Of course, he could land safely easily enough, but it appeared that his opponent had no intention of letting him. Lee had jumped himself just after kicking him, and flew behind him on a parallel trajectory. "Kage buyo..." he murmured, almost to himself, as they peaked, and the bandages bound all around his hands seemed to come to life and started snaking around him in a most unpleasant fashion. "Omote renge!"

Sasuke was not certain what was about to happen, but he was more than sure that he wanted no part of it. Just before the bandages tightened around his hands, he formed a ram seal and _focused_ , and in a sudden jerk of motion he was elsewhere.

Having been upside-down when he initiated the shunshin, and not having the time to adjust his orientation as well as his location, he ended up twenty feet away, six above the ground, and head pointed straight down. He just managed to curl around and land on his back, breaking the fall, and he decided to just lie there for a moment, nursing his stomach, which, judging by how it currently felt, would be one large bruise in a few hours.

He heard a thud as, apparently, Lee also landed. It occurred to him that Lee might not consider the match over, and he struggled to his feet. It seemed that he need not have worried. Lee was currently involved in a confrontation, if you could call it that, with a...giant technicolor tortoise.

_Ooookay...._

Things made slightly more sense when he noticed the Konoha forehead protector dangling around the tortoise's neck, indicating that it was some sort of summon. Of course, this did not answer the questions of who had summoned the tortoise, where they were, and why Lee was cowering like a penitent in front of it.

As he watched, a man appeared on the tortoise's shell, a man who might have been Lee's clone, if older. Unlike Lee, he wore a standard flak jacket over his green jumpsuit, and he jumped down from on top of the tortoise with the sort of grace you would expect of a taijutsu master. He seemed to be scolding Lee about something; Sasuke could not hear him properly, but the word 'lotus' seemed to come up a lot, along with much ranting about youth. Then Lee, at a word Sasuke did not hear, stood up straight in an attention posture, and the stranger—his jounin-sensei, maybe?—struck him across the face hard enough to send him to the ground. Sasuke jumped at that, but what happened next was far more surprising: Lee jumped up from the ground, and both shinobi started _hugging_ each other, tears streaming down their faces, repeating the same words over and over.

"Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

This went on for far longer than it should have. Sasuke, baffled, glanced aside at Naruto and Sakura, who were staring at the scene. Naruto had a look of horrified fascination on his face.

"I was wrong," he muttered, apparently unaware that he was speaking. "He doesn't do that just to mess with people. There's someone _else_."

At long last, the two broke up, and both turned to Team Seven, who were standing near each other, staring open-mouthed. Lee stepped forward and spoke to Sasuke.

"Yosh! Uchiha Sasuke! I must thank you, for you have revealed to me a weakness in my ultimate technique! I will train until my bindings wrap an opponent too quickly for them to form seals, and if I cannot do that I will do five hundred pushups with each hand, and if I cannot do that I will do a thousand squats with each leg, and if I cannot do that I will climb up and down the Hokage Mountain three times with only one arm!"

Sasuke stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. "Right. I think I'll be working on my sealless shunshin."

"YOSH! I congratulate you! You have learned of the genius of hard work! I will fight you again when you have done that, and we will compare the flames of our youth!" Lee made a thoroughly ridiculous pose, one hand extended in a thumbs up while the sun glinted off his teeth, then ran off, presumably in search of the stairs up.

Sasuke shook his head, bemused, as the older man approached them.

"I believe you are the team of my hip rival, Kakashi?" inquired he, and received nods from Naruto and Sakura. "Wonderful!" he continued. "Uchiha Sasuke-kun, I must apologize for my student. He seeks to stoke the flames of his youth by becoming a genius of hard work, but occasionally they overcome him and he loses sight of his priorities. He should not have used that move on you in a spar."

Sasuke did not reply, but instead looked thoughtfully after Lee. "He's strong."

The man grinned, uncannily like Lee, and nodded. "He is a genius of hard work! But unfortunately I must be going now. I hope to see you again!" He shunshinned away.

Sasuke looked over at Naruto, who looked to be suppressing a grin. He sighed resignedly. "Just say it."

Naruto snickered. "Okay. You an arrogant bastard with too high an opinion of yourself? Totally vindicated right there."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Whatever, dobe. We'd better get going, we're going to be late."

Naruto nodded, and all three trooped over to the hallway.

* * *

Kakashi was waiting for them outside the actual Room 301, which was accessible through the stairwell at the back of the building. He grinned at them in his trademark mostly-obscured way as they came up.

"Good to see you all. You're almost late."

"We had a bit of a delay," said Naruto, grinning. He had seen Lee practice with his team a few times over the month that he had known them, and it was absolutely priceless to see Sasuke cut down to size. It had, safe to say, been _slightly frustrating_ to learn that Sasuke's Sharingan made him basically unbeatable in taijutsu, even when he drew on the Kyuubi's boost as far as he could without actually forming a chakra shroud.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "I see," he said neutrally. "Would this have anything to do with the fact that Sasuke looks as if he's been punched rather hard by someone?"

Sasuke gave Kakashi a minor glare, but Naruto was impressed. None of Sasuke's injuries were visible, and as far as Naruto could see he was moving normally. "It would," said the Uchiha flatly, declining to say more.

Kakashi smiled again. "Very well. Can I see your forms, please?"

Each of them handed Kakashi their filled-out entry form—Naruto had to dive into one of his scrolls to retrieve it. Kakashi glanced them over.

"These seem to be in order. Go on in, everyone's waiting."

Sasuke smirked in his infuriatingly understated way, Naruto grinned broadly, and Sakura smiled. Naruto led the way through the door.

The room beyond was full of people. Alarmingly enough, Naruto at first glance saw no one else their age; the average person in the room might have been sixteen or seventeen, with many older than that. Most of them looked rather rough.

He glanced around again, and saw some familiar faces along the wall off to the side. Shikamaru and Chouji stood there alongside the marginally annoying fangirl who they had been teamed with, and there were Kiba and that Shino kid in his sunglasses and coat.

And Hinata.

Naruto faltered as he saw her, then continued. They had not sparred during the month since that day; she had never been the one to take that initiative, and Naruto could not bring himself to ask. They were as friendly as ever when they met in passing, and it was even something Naruto missed—but whenever he thought to do it, his mind shied away from the idea, throwing up echoes of the rolling thunder of explosions and malicious red claws.

She smiled timidly at him, but there was confusion and sadness in her eyes. His return grin was just a bit more hesitant than it should have been, and he cursed himself in his mind.

His near-brooding was interrupted by the blonde fangirl launching herself off the wall where she was leaning and grabbing tightly onto Sasuke's arm, babbling all the while about how long it had been since she had seen him (by Naruto's count, it had been sometime last week in the street) and how lucky they both were to have run across each other here (Sasuke's expression of bare tolerance spoke eloquently to his opinion, at least, on the matter). Naruto rolled his eyes and ignored her, until Sakura, walking on his other side, snapped. She dived across his path to latch onto Sasuke's other arm.

"Ino-pig! Don't chase Sasuke like that! He doesn't need someone like you dragging him down!" she said, in the angry shriek that Naruto had desperately hoped she had gotten out of the habit of using. Ino was obviously just about to fire back, holding possessively to Sasuke's arm on her side, when Sasuke turned an actual scowl on Sakura and did something quick and intricate that left both their grips broken and Sasuke standing about half a pace ahead of them. He turned about and glanced at her with contempt.

"You know, you were a lot more tolerable when you weren't doing that," he said, every inch the aristocratic Uchiha. Sakura and Ino gaped at him as he turned and leaned against the wall between Naruto and Shino.

"Wow, he's never done that before," murmured Ino to herself. Naruto rolled his eyes inwardly.

"Hey, Naruto," said Kiba, coming around in front of him. Naruto gave him a lazy wave.

"Yup?"

"You doing this thing too?"

Naruto looked pointedly around the room. "Why else would we be here?"

Kiba grinned in his trademarked Kiba-like way, eager and just a bit feral. "Sure you can hack it?"

Naruto grinned back. "Think you can, dog-boy?"

The dog on Kiba's head barked indignantly, while Kiba took offense. "Hey! No insulting Akamaru! We'll just see how well you do here!"

"So we will, I guess," said Naruto. Kiba muttered under his breath and went back to stand with his team.

"You people might want to keep it down a little," said a new voice. All nine of the rookies looked up, to see an older boy, perhaps seventeen, silver-haired with a Leaf hitai-ite and large round glasses, though unlike Shino's they were clear glass. He continued, apparently unaffected by the sudden suspicious gaze of the nine genin. "Most of the people here don't like it much when rookies get in. If you draw attention to yourselves, you might cause yourselves problems later on."

There was silence for a moment before Naruto broke it. "If anyone has a problem with me, they can take it up with me and see how well they prosecute it with a broken face," he said, not shouting, but not bothering to keep his voice down. "Same goes for everyone here." Several of the other genin, notably Sasuke and Kiba, nodded emphatically.

The older boy pushed his glasses up his nose. "An admirable attitude, but perhaps not the easiest one to take." He smiled. "Perhaps I'll help you out a bit. Is there anything you'd like to know?"

The rookies shifted, glancing at each other. Sasuke and Naruto in particular caught each others' eye. _What's his game?_

Kiba spoke up. "Know about what?"

"Oh, anything. The exam, the nations, the other participants. Just ask, and I'll probably know something about it." He pulled a deck of cards from a holster on his leg and played some tricks with it, shuffling and reshuffling the cards. Naruto caught a glimpse of some of their undersides; they were all blanks.

"I've keyed these cards to my chakra so that they only reveal their information to me," the boy said. He picked up a card and did something to it, and a map with associated graphics appeared on the blank face. Naruto, watching carefully, noticed tiny seals flickering over the card in the instant that the map appeared. _Interesting. How is that done?_

Sasuke looked at him levelly. "I wonder...show me what you have on Sabaku no Gaara and Uzumaki Naruto."

The boy put the card with the map away and did his little shuffling routine again, pulling out two more cards. "You have names? Too easy." He activated both cards in sequence. "Sabaku no Gaara. Son of the Yondaime Kazekage of Sand. This is his first Chunin Exam, just like you guys, if I'm not mistaken." He glanced over the information. "Various missions...oh, isn't _that_ interesting, he has a B-rank mission while still a genin. And according to this, he has never once been injured on a mission." There were a few scattered gasps of surprise; Naruto was not one of them. That guy had certainly had the attitude to go with the sort of genius who never got hit.

The other boy grinned. "But enough about him. Uzumaki Naruto." He exposed the other card. "Not much information about him here...surprising, considering he's a Leaf-nin. I usually have quite a bit on them. Made genin as last in his class, due to a technically failing score on the ninjutsu exam. Thoroughly unexceptional, at first glance. The usual scattering of D-ranks, along with one C-rank. But if you look a bit more closely, you find that the record of that C-rank has been marked secret as secret gets. And there's rather a number of secrets around him. Another oddity...apparently, some fifteen special sessions of the Konoha village council were immediately followed by decrees relating to Uzumaki Naruto. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, eh?" He adjusted his glasses again and glanced around with a sly look. Naruto stared back at him.

"Any other requests?" the boy said, sounding bored. Sakura hesitated for a moment, then spoke up.

"What villages are attending the exam, and how many teams from each?" she asked. The older genin raised an eyebrow and pulled out another card, which proved to be his map again.

"An interesting question. Not immediately relevant to the pursuit of combative goals, but very useful to one who seeks to obtain a view of the big picture. You are an interesting thinker, genin-chan." The symbols on the map flashed, each one displaying numbers next to it, and the boy read them off, offering some interesting commentary on each of the villages. Apparently, relatively few teams had come from Kumo this year, and even fewer from Iwa. The boy noted that the parents of this generation of Iwa genin would have grown up during the Third Shinobi World War, and quite possibly told their children horror stories of _Konoha no Kiiroi Senkou_. It was after his discussion of Otogakure no Sato, who had only sent one team this exam and never any before that, that something interesting happened.

Three shinobi walked forward, all in drab colors and gray sleeves, all wearing a hitai-ite that Naruto found unfamiliar: a single musical eighth note. The two whose faces were exposed hung back a bit, flanking the large, intimidating third, who had bandages covering all but his left eye.

"We don't like your attitude, punk," said the bandaged one. "Otogakure no Sato is not a minor or an insignificant village."

The Leaf genin put his cards away and stood. "Well, I'm sorry if I've—" he began, but he was cut off.

"Save it!" the Oto genin barked, and lunged for him with a punch.

Naruto tensed, but held himself back; Leaf genin or not, this boy had his own agenda, and seeing how he—and the Oto shinobi—fought could only be a benefit. The silver-haired boy dodged backwards, and successfully avoided the strike. He had just begun to grin in triumph at the masked genin when his grin turned to a look of horror, his glasses cracked, and he fell to his knees in pain.

The masked Oto-nin's bandages moved as if he had grinned himself. "Don't talk down on us, Leaf-nin. Major village you may be, but none of you fools can take us one-on-one." He and his two companions retired back into the crowd.

Sakura had moved forwards and knelt by the boy's side. "Uh..ah, are you all right? I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

"I'm fine," the boy said, with slight strain in his voice. "It's Yakushi Kabuto. Thank you."

Naruto turned to Sasuke with a questioning look. As he had expected, the Uchiha's eyes were red.

"He did something with that big metal gauntlet of his. I guess the relevant information is to beware near misses with that thing, or proximity to it at all."

Naruto nodded, but Kiba pushed forward beside them. "Something else," he said, shaking his head slightly. "It's kinda sound-based. Messed me up a little, my hearing's better than yours, and Akamaru is even better than that." The dog on his head was whining in protest.

Sasuke nodded. "Good to know. Thanks. Might want to tell the others, careful of the gauntlet."

Kiba nodded and moved back.

It was about then that there was a sudden great cloud of smoke at the front of the room, punctuated by a crackle of pops, and there were suddenly a line of shinobi standing there, all of chuunin rank or higher. The one in the center wore a hitai-ite that covered his entire head and had a pair of deep scars cutting diagonally across his face; he took a step forward and shouted loudly across the room.

"All right, you brats, listen up! My name is Morino Ibiki, and for the next few hours I rule your lives! So pay attention!"

The genin around the room snapped to varying degrees of attention, and the man grinned thinly.

"All right! You will find each of your names written on one of the desks up here! You will sit at the desk that has your name on it! Don't try anything cute like moving names around—you have been placed _precisely_ where we want you! Jump to it!"

There was a flurry of motion as everyone moved at once. It took several minutes to resolve. Naruto found his seat quickly; he was at the back, between two people he didn't know, one an older Leaf-nin, one a Suna-nin, though not one of the three that they had confronted a week beforehand.

As the commotion died down, the chuunin who had shunshinned into the room alongside Ibiki moved along the rows, handing out sheets of paper. Ibiki warned them from the front in the same barking style not to turn the papers over until told; Naruto left his well alone.

When the papers had all been distributed, Ibiki barked out another diatribe about the points to be scored, and warned them firmly against attempting to cheat. Naruto flipped his test over with the rest. He was not hugely enthusiastic about taking a written test, but he knew that he wasn't as bad at them as he had been; he knew a lot of little random facts, anyway, from reading in the Archive, and hoped he could at least figure out the rest.

His hopes were quickly dashed. Only three of the nine problems were even remotely comprehensible, and the one he felt most sure in being able to answer, which involved solving a cipher of unknown algorithm, he knew darned well was an advanced problem, one which ordinarily would have been studied by a jounin or special jounin specializing in information control. _How the hell am I supposed to get this?_ He ran over the scoring system in his head. Only a zero lost...and you could be eliminated mid-test with your team if you got caught cheating so many times that you lost all your points. He glanced back and forth at the walls, where two lines of chuunin sat with clipboards, malicious grins on their faces, occasionally tapping their pencils or marking something on their boards.

He bent his head to the solving of the cryptanalytical problem, hoping that he could at least avoid a zero. It took him only a few minutes to write the standard matrix for analysis of such ciphers, at which point he ran the ciphertext through it and stopped, stumped. There should have been some sort of pattern, one that might have suggested further avenues of approach; instead, it was just more gibberish. He mentally upped his estimate of the difficulty of the problem. _Maybe Sakura could do it...she was always the books person._

At that point, one of the watching chuunin called out a number, sounding bored. "Number fifteen, you're out. Numbers...twelve and seventy-three, out."

Three genin stood, walking to the back of the classroom, two shooting dark looks at the third. Naruto saw that they were from Iwa, and wondered if any of that low-represented village would make it through at all.

He stared at the codes problem for a while, then shook his head; he wasn't getting anywhere. In an attempt to clear his mind, he flipped the test sheet over and started scratching out a seal he had been studying in the Archive a few days before, seeing if he could recreate it from memory.

* * *

Sasuke glared down at his paper. One problem, asking him to compare the advantages and disadvantages of some fifteen _katon_ ninjutsu in a certain combat situation, had been easy. The rest...were impossible. And he knew _katon_ ninjutsu; that was his thing, that was his legacy from his destroyed clan. He knew quite well that no one else in the room would have been able to answer that question, not unless they were disguised jounin or _very_ experienced chuunin. _Is it impossible?_

He flashed back to another test, also to determine if they were to gain a rank, though there the consequences of failure were much greater. He had taken the test at face value, and Kakashi had kicked the crap out of him. It had taken the dobe to point out that the test was, in fact, impossible as presented, and they needed to work outside the suggested rules in order to pass it. _Is this the same thing?_

_If we cheat, then we lose points...that's very strange, certainly that wasn't what we did in the Academy. Iruka would have kicked you out for cheating once—that's it!_

He glanced quickly around. Of course. You were _meant_ to cheat, and the few who had already been eliminated just _weren't good enough at it_. What could he do?

His neighbors, who were the only people whose papers he could actually see, were both as stumped as he. However, there was someone two rows ahead who was writing vigorously. Sasuke couldn't see his paper, couldn't see what question he was answering, but he could easily see his hand doing the writing... _got it._

Sasuke flipped his paper over and, with a minuscule flow of chakra, activated his bloodline. His eyes turned red, and the world slowed itself. Positioning his hand over the blank backside of the paper, he turned his eyes on the hand of the person writing, and let them direct his hand, not mediating the actions at all, but merely mimicking. Kakashi had warned him sternly against doing this in battle—that was a trap that far too many Sharingan users fell into, to let the godlike speed and imitation power of the eyes make them complacent, and if a decent ninjutsu user caught them mimicking blindly, it was trivial to make an intentional mistake that the user would survive but the copier wouldn't. Here, though, it was just what was needed. Sasuke watched as his hand, entirely on its own, copied out a lengthy analysis of the likely responses of the Godaikoku to a certain provocation carried out by the minor village Ame, and how such a provocation could lead to a Fourth Shinobi World War. It was rather interesting, if dry.

Several minutes later, the genin he was copying from stopped writing and moved his hand off to one side. Sasuke reasserted control over his hand and flipped the paper over, finding out which question fit that answer, and copied it out, this time in his own handwriting. The copy on the back of the page was a perfect imitation of the other genin's test, handwriting included. _They could probably figure out how I cheated if they look at the tests later...but I don't think they will, it's a matter of getting the info, not concealing how._

He finished copying it out and activated his eyes again, looking around for another answer to copy.

* * *

Naruto finished up the seal and looked at it closely. It looked about the same as it had in the book—he was drawing it in pencil on mundane paper, so of course it would be a little different, but he couldn't see any obvious disconnections. He hesitated for a moment before powering it—mistakes involving seals often had unpredictable and problematic consequences—but decided to go ahead. It was just a listener seal for communication techniques—it couldn't go _that_ far wrong.

As he ran chakra into the seal, it glowed and reformed itself, flowing into an unbroken ring around its empty center. _So far, so good._ Then, as it listened to the subtle chakra flows that all communications jutsus or seals used, tiny swirls formed in the center, moving lazily to reflect the background chakra sources of humans moving around and using jutsu.

There was something else there, though, and Naruto frowned. There was a carrier wave somewhere, a pretty strong one, which implied that he was right in the middle of a communications network—but why? Was someone using it to cheat? He stared at the seal, concentrating on it, and saw a tiny burst of activity along that carrier wave. Then it disappeared again. _Huh?_

He kept staring at the seal. Ordinarily, looking fixedly at a small piece of sealed writing on a piece of paper for more than a minute at a time would have been considered boring; Naruto did not consider it so. This was a more interesting mystery than that cipher problem. There had been several more bursts of activity over the same wave, but Naruto could not see any difference between them, nor divine the pattern in their timing. _What's going on? If someone's cheating with this, they're doing it really subtly._

He was about to try something else when he saw a change. There was a burst of activity like any other, then a longer one in two parts, different from any that he had seen before. As he watched, the same two-part burst repeated itself twice more. Then his reverie was broken by one of the chuunin proctors.

"Number twenty-three, gone," said he. "Numbers fourteen and fifty, gone." The three genin trooped out with the same sort of resigned anger that Naruto had seen in all the failures, but Naruto was wondering about that seal. He had seen a unique transmission over that carrier wave just before the chuunin called someone gone. _Are they the ones using it?_ He glanced around the room, looking at the chuunin specifically. There didn't seem to be anything odd happening...but how did they know to kick someone out after cheating five times, if different proctors caught the different times?

Naruto quickly scratched another seal below the first. The first was the very basic all-frequency receiver seal for communications; it was basically a toy for learners, and never used for anything else. This was a more specialized one, one that communicated between two different seals what was written on either, about the simplest communication seal that was actually good for anything. He wrote two of them, writing the frequency specifier carefully identical on each, and activated them both.

There was another burst of activity on his listener seal, this one on a different frequency, as the two communicating seals activated. Naruto doodled idly on one, and saw the image transferred instantly to the other, and the carrier wave on the new frequency burst into furious activity. He stopped, grinning, then made a single tick-mark on one of the seals. It created the same sort of transmission as he had been seeing on the original frequency, and he grinned even more widely. This could be interesting.

He messed around with the frequency specifiers on his seals until he had found one that would cross across with the carrier wave that the proctors were apparently using, then made as if to begin something else. He was stymied, however, by the fact that he was out of paper. He looked around frantically, and noticed that the older Leaf-nin on his left had yet to write anything on his test paper at all. He rolled his eyes. _Idiot._ In a single motion, he reached over, stole the other genin's paper, and switched it with his own.

The other genin started in surprise, then turned to glare at Naruto, apparently averse to make any sort of loud noise lest he be marked off for cheating. He gesticulated wildly at the two papers, demanding implicitly that he return them.

Naruto ignored him, instead flipping the other genin's blank test over so that he could use the back. On this one, he sketched the seal large, encompassing almost the whole of the paper; the chuunins' papers probably used the whole sheet, and this would be the best he could do without resorting to fancier seals that he couldn't do without looking in a book.

The Leaf-nin beside him was still angry, and his wild gestures were distracting. Finally, when he attempted to snatch the paper back, Naruto blocked his hand down into the table—it was ridiculously easy; what was this person doing in the chuunin exam with only that level of speed?—and, turning to him, spoke silently, enunciating clearly so that the other boy could read his lips.

"Deal with it. I'm using this."

The other genin wrenched his hand away and looked at Naruto's paper. On seeing that it was actually more filled out than his own, he looked at Naruto again, this time with deep confusion.

Naruto tuned him out and continued drawing the new seal. This one was more intricate, and he checked it several times before powering it. Then, taking a deep breath, he hit it with chakra.

The borders of the seal slithered together, and lines began drawing themselves in the center. Naruto wished he hadn't given away the paper with his listener seals—he would be willing to bet that the frequency had gone crazy. As he watched, the apparently random lines appearing in the center of the seal began to join, forming text, two lists down the length of the page, each with a blank space besides. Naruto watched until the text stopped changing, then looked it over.

_A list of participants...and those ticks...._

Each entry—just an anonymous number—had a box next to it, with varying numbers of tick marks in it. Several of the entries also had small X's on the other side of the names, and a significant number of these had five ticks in their associated box. In fact, everyone with five ticks had an X, though many without did as well.

As Naruto watched, a tick drew itself in the box of a number—thirty-three—that already had four ticks in it. Now having five, an X was drawn next to the number, then, after a slight delay, next to the numbers twenty and forty-one.

As Naruto processed this, he heard the voice of one of the proctors, calling someone out again. "Number thirty-three, gone. Numbers twenty, forty-one, gone."

Naruto jerked up, staring at the chuunin who had just spoken, as the three shinobi, including the Suna-nin who had been on Naruto's other side, stood and stormed out. The target of his gaze was oblivious, but went back to scanning the room, looking for inept cheaters.

Naruto glanced at his own number, number forty-two. There was a single tick there—probably from his blatantly stealing another examinee's test paper.

A wicked grin grew on Naruto's face. His seal could transmit, as well as receive. _I could spoof it, but only to cut people out who shouldn't be...nah, that's too mean. But I can mess with the proctors something fierce._ He picked up his pencil again and wrote in the seal, above the two lists and between them.

_Hi there!_

Nothing appeared to happen, though he would have sworn he saw one of the proctors twitch. After a moment's delay, words appeared just below his.

_Cut it out. That's not what this is for._

_No!_ Naruto wrote back, and grinned.

The same hand wrote beneath him again, just a little bit hurried. _Who are you, anyway? Do your job._ Naruto grinned. They thought he was one of the proctors! Heh.

_I am doing my job. That's precisely what I'm doing._

_Who are you? Quit joking. This isn't what we're here for._ Naruto thought he knew who was writing—only one of the chuunin around the room was writing anything in sentences. He wrote back.

_It's precisely what I'm here for. I suppose you are here, in the third seat from the east end of the northern row, in order to watch and make sure the little cute genin don't cheat?_

He was rewarded by said chuunin jerking in his seat and looking around rather frantically. Naruto kept from bursting out in laughter with an effort. Uzumaki Naruto, fuinjutsu prankmaster regretfully in retirement on the Hokage's order, still had it.

_Who are you? What are you doing with one of these papers?_ wrote back the chuunin, his hand this time a little shaky. Naruto looked at the proctor, and saw him glancing around every few seconds, paranoid. He grinned.

_You don't need to worry your head, I'm not trying to infiltrate the test or anything stupid. What nefarious things could I get up to with one of your communications papers, anyway?_

_Identify yourself!_

A few others had gotten in on the game by now, and there was a visible air of tension in the room as the chuunin glanced at each other. Someone else wrote in small writing in one corner. _Can we stop messing up the papers, please?_

_No._ wrote Naruto in equally small handwriting right below it, then went back to the original conversation. _I hereby identify myself. I am the person writing this message right now._

_That's a very helpful introduction, I'll have to remember that,_ wrote someone else, apparently of a sarcastic temperament.

_Happy to have been an inspiration to you,_ Naruto wrote back beneath that one. Before anyone could respond, he drew an arrow indicating number forty-three, his Leaf-nin neighbor, who did not have any tickmarks in his box, probably due to not having written anything. _This guy's an idiot, in case you were wondering, you should really just cut him out on general principles._

His original interlocutor wrote directly underneath that. _Are you an examinee?_

_Good guess! I wonder if you'll ever find out,_ Naruto wrote in return. The paper was getting rather crowded by now; he selected an unused corner and drew a grid three by three. _Anyone for tic-tac-toe?_

At this, he swore he saw three of the chuunin suppressing laughter. The first one to write him—Naruto had identified him by location—gritted his teeth and wrote directly above the board. _Stop playing around._ Then scribbled over it.

_That wasn't very nice,_ wrote Naruto. At this, the proctor's head snapped up, and he scanned the room, as if looking for the culprit. Naruto tried very hard to look like an innocent genin examinee who knew nothing about seals or communications whatsoever, no sir, though it took quite some doing to hide his grin.

The game was interrupted by a bell, which was taken by the proctors with a mixture of relief and disappointment. Naruto glanced at the clock and saw that the forty-five minutes allotted them at the beginning was up. He turned his test over, hiding the seal, leaving only a blank test. Glancing quickly at number forty-three beside him, he was glad to see that he also had his test face-up, hiding his original seals. He made a face to see that the other genin hadn't written anything on this test either; it was blank except for Naruto's own early work on the cipher. _His own grave, I guess._

The examiner, Ibiki, was standing at the front, looking solemn. "All right! You've had your forty-five minutes to spend on the first nine questions. I will now introduce the tenth question." There was a shuffle as everyone perked up. "However, there's an unusual rule associated with the tenth question, that I'll explain first. At this time, anyone who wishes to decline to take the question may raise their hands, and they'll be out of the exam. Of course, this will also disqualify your teammates, so you'll all get to go home."

"Why would we do that?" yelled someone in the mildly-reduced group.

Ibiki smiled thinly. "If you choose to take this question now, and you fail it, then you lose the right to participate in Chuunin exams for the rest of your life."

This precipitated an outraged flurry, which Ibiki waited out. Then he spoke again. "So, who's for it? If you raise your hand you just get to go home now and try your luck in six months. Stay here...who knows what could happen. Anyone?"

There was a pregnant silence before someone—Naruto thought it was another Iwa-nin—raised his hand, all the while making loud comments about how Konoha was insane. His companions gave him dirty looks as they all three left the room.

That precipitated a flood. Only perhaps a quarter of the seats were empty after the test of cheating acuity, but now teams left and right stood to leave. By the time the flow stopped, only a third of the seats were still full.

Ibiki made several more threatening comments, and a few more teams left, then there was a long silence.

"Anyone else?" said Ibiki. "Going to take the smart way out? You know the risk you take by remaining."

Naruto figured that then was the time to speak. "You know," he said, pitching his voice so it carried, "you're trying awfully hard to make us quit out of this. Why? Do you have to personally administer the test or something? Making it easier on yourself?"

That bought a snort and a stare from Ibiki. "Hardly. I'm doing you punks a favor."

Naruto remembered the two disguised proctors saying something very similar downstairs, outside the genjutsu trap. "Oh, really? I love how much you care about us, Ibiki-san."

Ibiki gave him a glare. "Either quit or shut up."

Naruto merely grinned.

No one else quit after that, and eventually Ibiki apparently got tired of psyching them out. "All right, then. The tenth question. For the final of the written test of this year's Chuunin exam, everyone here passes."

This, predictably enough, brought an outroar. Naruto had been partly expecting something like it, after making the connection between Ibiki's behavior and that of the proctors downstairs, but it still took him slightly aback. _It was that easy?_

Ibiki then launched into an explanation of how shinobi didn't have the option of turning down missions just because there was a chance of death, which, when he articulated it, left Naruto with a severe case of 'obvious syndrome'. Given that the question had cleaned out a good majority of the room, however, it was apparently not nearly as obvious to some.

As Ibiki wound up his explanation, during the course of which he had for some reason found a pretext to take off his hitai-ite and reveal a truly impressive network of scars, Naruto's glance flashed to the window. Just as he saw it, the window exploded inward, and four kunai flashed out. Naruto was halfway into a reflex to duck and cover when he noticed that, firstly, none of the kunai were aimed at anyone in the room, and secondly, they were attached to each other by some sort of large sheet.

The mystery was solved a few moments later when the kunai landed, extending a large, banner-like sign that read 'Anko Mitarashi' in huge letters. In front of it stood a woman with hair somewhere between purple and brown, wearing a mesh top under a tan overcoat, making a pose matched in ridiculousness only by something that Gai or Lee would do.

Ibiki was not fazed, but merely chastised the woman on her earliness. Naruto was still calming his breathing, and missed some of the woman's talk, but got the gist of it: show up for the second stage of the exam, the next day, at Training Ground 44. _Great, it's in that place? Wonderful._

They were dismissed minutes later, and found Kakashi waiting for them outside. He raised an eyebrow.

"You passed. I was hoping you would."

"Of course we did, sensei, because we're _awesome_ ," Naruto said.

Kakashi's face crinkled up. "Indeed. Well, you'd best be ready for the second phase tomorrow. You should get home. Make sure to get plenty of sleep."

* * *

Morino Ibiki had gathered up the test papers long ago, and also heard the report of several variously outraged or amused chuunin proctors. He stared down at two of said test papers, both of which had still-running communications seals on them, and shook his head wordlessly.

After finding the papers, he had asked if any of them had seen anything unusual at number forty-two, and heard that he had received one mark off for blatantly switching papers with the Leaf-nin next to him. That examinee had been eliminated during the psychological-torture part of the Exam, and had apparently never written anything on either of the papers he was given—the handwriting on the half-completed ciphers problem matched that which had tormented the proctors later on. He had checked out who had sat at that number, and found—of course—that it was the same dratted kid who had called him out during the final elimination stage, leaving him with probably one-and-a-half times as many to pass as he should have had.

He shook his head again and laughed. _I think I'm going to tell the Hokage about this, he should get a kick out of it._

* * *

It ended up coming out in a social meeting between the jounin-sensei whose teams were taking part in the exam. All four Konoha rookie teams that had entered had passed, counting Gai's team because, though not technically rookies, they were quite notably younger than the usual entrants. This led, naturally, to some bragging among and around said jounin-sensei, which was what they were doing in one of the various lounge areas when Ibiki found them.

"Kakashi-san, Uzumaki Naruto is yours, right?"

Kakashi nodded. "Did he get your attention?"

"Called me out when I was trying to intimidate the last few into quitting. Said something about how I was trying so hard to get them to quit, he wondered if I had to personally administer the test to each one who didn't. No one else quit after that."

Kakashi and Kurenai laughed, and Asuma grinned. Gai became teary-eyed.

"Yes! To so inspire his compatriots! You should be proud of your student, Kakashi! Even under the influence of your hip attitude, he has discovered for himself the power of youth!"

Kakashi turned absently to look at him. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"

Everyone else just rolled their eyes at the byplay.

Ibiki nodded. "Yeah, funny, but there's something else. For some unfathomable reason, he was playing around with communications seals during the test, and managed to break into the papers we were using to coordinate between all the proctors. Kind of freaked some of them out with refusing to tell them who he was—he had one thinking he was some sort of infiltrator."

At this, everyone looked at Kakashi, who glanced around. "What? Yes, he's good at fuinjutsu. Not my doing, you'd have to blame Hokage-sama for that. It's not like those papers are secured against anything in particular, anyway."

Ibiki nodded. "True enough...but that's quite impressive, knowing so much about it as a genin. That's his specialty, I guess?"

Kakashi grinned under his mask at this. "Not really, actually."

Everyone there was taken aback. "So, what does he specialize in?" said Ibiki dryly.

Kakashi turned the page of his book. "Heavy combat."

* * *

The Hokage, when he heard about it, could only laugh and laugh.


	11. Waivers

They gathered just outside of Training Ground 44, convenient to the tall, barbed-wire fence covered in dire warnings of doom and destruction. The area immediately outside the fence was a quarantine zone, designed specifically to be inhospitable to the occasionally noxious plants and animals of the forest; even so, it still had to be weeded occasionally for the more determinedly invasive specimens. They stood on low, tough turfy grass that held onto its ground for dear life, the first line of defense against the seedlings of, for instance, carnivorous trees.

Naruto had spent most of the previous afternoon alternately packing, frantically deciding what to pack, and obsessively looking over all the available information about the Forest in the Archive and his own memories. He had treated the place far more nonchalantly before the first incident with the giant spider, and the second incident with the overly affectionate hanging vine of unknown intentions. Knowing that the second part of the exam was to be held there set off all sort of alarm bells; for instance, there was the one that said, roughly, _you can't even cross across it in less than a day at full speed, and there's no way the task is that simple._ He had packed accordingly, by which was meant in paranoid awareness of everything he might possibly need. It took him four scrolls to fit it all, and he had switched to proper chakra-storing scrolls to rid himself of the drain, which was becoming annoying, if not actually a hindrance.

They arrived about five minutes before the specified time, and saw about half the teams who had passed the first exam present already. None of the other Konoha rookies had arrived yet, so Team Seven stood in an awkward clump among awkward clumps, none of the competitors knowing each other well enough to socialize.

Remembering something, Naruto dived into a pocket— _not_ a storage scroll, he would prefer to keep himself unmaimed by explosions—and removed a sheaf of sealed tags, each a little bigger than an explosive note. The seal, identical on each one, was remarkably simple—just a large circle, actually—but a complex, convoluted knot bound it together at the bottom. He split the sheaf into three stacks and handed two of them to Sasuke and Sakura.

Sasuke glanced at the seal and raised an eyebrow. "What are these?"

"Well, I don't think they've really got a name yet, but I call them chakra tags," said Naruto, putting the third stack back in his pocket. "I was just thinking, now that I actually have access to a lot of proper sealing paper, maybe I could use it for something useful to us, instead of just selling stuff to the weapons shop. So what these are are kind of like soldier pills for chakra."

Sasuke glanced at him. "We have soldier pills, dobe."

"Sure, but you can't use more than like two in a row," said Naruto. "Otherwise you go all overdosy and start throwing up and die. These things just dump chakra straight into your system. So they're not quite as good as a soldier pill for if you're tired or need sleep, but if you've just been spamming a lot of big jutsu...it _should_ make you good as new."

Sasuke raised both eyebrows, this time. "And you can use them over and over?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. You want to be careful with using them if you're not really low, because they might overload your chakra system and do unpleasant things to it, but you should be able to just use one, use it all up on fancy jutsu, and do it again as many times as you want. I'd be careful with testing that too far, though; I've only tested them for people using them one at a time."

Sakura had been peering intently at the knot that bound the circle of the seal. "How do we use them?"

"Just put it on your skin, like on your arm, and...well, Sasuke, you can probably just activate them. Just like an explosive tag, and then wait for a few seconds to let it dump, and then peel it off and you're done. Sakura...when you do it, how about instead you rip off the top half, that's the half without the fancy knot, once you've got it in contact. That only gives you half. I'm not sure what your chakra capacity is, but the full thing might overload you."

Sakura nodded, looking a bit crestfallen. Sasuke glanced at her, then at Naruto, then back. "Naruto, I imagine there's some inefficiency with these, with how much you spend to charge them versus how much they give us?"

Naruto nodded. "I figure it's about half of the total that actually gets through. I imagine that's why no one else appears to have ever come up with these; someone who isn't...you know...would have to put themselves in bed for a week to charge one to a useful level."

Sasuke continued in the same line. "And you said that one should just about fill me up to capacity?"

"Most likely," said Naruto with a shrug.

"And how many can you charge in one sitting?" said Sasuke.

Naruto looked sheepish. "I haven't found a limit. I did all of these in one night."

Sasuke, though, was not looking at him; he gave Sakura a rueful grin. She smiled back hesitantly.

After a moment of this, Sasuke looked back at Naruto. "Well, that does seem very helpful. Thanks, dobe." After a moment, Sakura nodded and murmured her thanks.

Naruto scratched the back of his head and grinned. "Well, I figured I might do something useful."

More teams had begun to arrive as they conversed, and Naruto saw a familiar tall, mostly-obscured figure in sunglasses some way away. He excused himself and set off between the teams gathered round, looking for Team Eight.

He approached them from behind. Hinata and Shino stood side by side, looking oddly similar but for their size, both in tan concealing jackets. Kiba was pacing back and forth around them; whenever he was turned towards Naruto, he could see an eager grin on his face.

Hinata turned around abruptly before he could get particularly close. Naruto marveled inwardly as always; even when her eyes were deactivated, she had an almost supernatural awareness of what was around her. Now, though, she was ducking her head, fiddling with her hands in front of her.

"A-ah...hello, Naruto-kun...."

Naruto grinned widely, forcing himself to express happiness even through his conflicted feelings; he had the idea that being hesitant around her wouldn't help Hinata at the moment. "Hey, Hinata-chan! How are you feeling about the test?"

"I-I suppose it'll be all right...I hope..." She seemed to shrink.

Naruto nodded vigorously. "You'll do fine! It should be a real advantage for you in this forest, there's not much visibility, so your Byakugan will be real useful." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the remaining stack of chakra tags. "Uh...I thought you might be able to use these," he said, slightly hesitantly. As she took them, Naruto quickly explained the use of the tags.

She stared at the tags with fascination. "Ah—thank you! Thank you very much! These are...very nice, thank you..."

Naruto grinned. "No problem!" He trailed off, uncertain what to say next, and was saved by the sudden appearance of that marginally-insane proctor from the day before in front of the crowd.

"All right, whelps!" she shouted, with a wide grin. Naruto was suddenly and forcibly reminded of the Kyuubi. "The fence behind me surrounds Konoha's Training Ground 44—also known as the Forest of Death!" She waited for the round of gasps and mutters to cease. Naruto shuddered, remembering that vine, and thinking of several other unpleasant nouns that the place could also be the Forest of.

After the reactions from the crowd had ceased, the proctor pulled a stack of papers from...somewhere, that ninja alternate dimension that everyone above jounin seemed to have, were they using specialized storage seals, or what?—and, breaking it into two, passed them around the crowd in two directions. "So these things coming around are waivers! Basically, they say that if you die in the exam, your parents aren't allowed to complain! So make no mistake, from now on people will die! They don't call it the Forest of Death to be ironic, and that's not even counting everyone else trying to kill you! Got it? If you don't have it, then _don't sign the form!_ "

No one made a production of doubting her; Naruto supposed that "ninjas can die" was too obvious even for the average genin—which wasn't that great a qualification, given the first test—to miss. When the forms came around to him, he glanced about for Sasuke and Sakura, only to be startled when they turned out to be right behind him.

Sasuke noted his reaction and looked amused. "Shinobi must be aware of their surroundings," he said, taking a form and passing them to Sakura. Sakura took one slightly more hesitantly, then passed it to some other team further on. Naruto signed his on his knee using a pencil from a pocket, and scowled.

"Sure, sure," he said, standing again. He glanced around. The only people in the immediate vicinity were Teams Seven and Eight. Shino and Kiba stood with signed forms in hand; Hinata still crouched, the form on her knee, and though she had signed it, she stared at it uncertainly. Then Kiba made an impatient noise, and she straightened.

The flurry of noise produced by people fussing with waivers had largely abated before the proctor spoke again. "All right! The format of the second test is simple. The Forest is ten kilometers in radius. At the center, there is a large tower. When you come up here—" she indicated a table hidden by a draping curtain "—and exchange your waivers, you will receive a scroll, like one of these two!" She had gotten a pair of sealed scrolls from the same inexplicable space as the waivers, and held one in each hand. On one seal was the character for _heaven_ , the other _earth_. "You will take this scroll with you into the forest! The goal is to arrive at the tower at the center of the forest, carrying two scrolls of opposite types, within five days! You may only continue past this round if you fulfill the goal within one hundred and twenty hours of the task's beginning and all your teammates are alive! You may not enter the forest before the task's beginning, nor may you leave the forest before one hundred and twenty hours have passed! Any questions? Good, because I wasn't going to answer them anyway! Now," the woman smirked, "form a line, no jostling!"

The contestants moved uncertainly towards the table, and contrary to the woman's order, there was indeed quite a bit of jostling. The two Konoha teams moved more or less as one, and ended up consecutive in the line.

As they were waiting, Hinata, directly in front of Naruto, glanced at her form again, and hesitated. Then turned to him. "Naruto-kun...are you...worried? About the test? They say people could die...."

Naruto grinned broadly. "Nah! I'm too awesome to die!" Hinata almost giggled, but her eyes were still fearful. Naruto saw, hesitated, then continued.

"I don't think it should be a problem. I know both of us are better fighters than just about anyone else here. Maybe not those Suna people, but I think they're the only real competition." He indicated the team with the homicidal redhead, which was the only team from Suna to have made it through the first exam, and had just left the tent. "We just have to make sure we fight our best. Remember not to pull any punches with those jyuuken things."

Hinata nodded, hesitantly at first, but gaining certainty as she continued. Then, her team had reached the head of the line, and disappeared behind the curtain. Several moments later, they reappeared, being led off around the perimeter of the forest by a Konoha chuunin. Naruto gave Hinata an enthusiastic wave, and she returned it more sedately.

They entered the curtained tent single file, and stood in a line in front of the small table inside. A nameless chuunin sat behind it, collecting the waivers; he took each one, cursorily checking the name and signature, and put it in a pile. The proctor—Anko, wasn't that what had been on the poster attached to those kunai?—stood beside him, handing out scrolls from one of two piles behind her. Sakura was handed a scroll, the kanji for _earth_ engraved on the seal that kept it shut.

"You'll want to hide that now, so other teams don't see what you have," she said. A grin flashed across her face. "Oh, also, you can't open the scrolls before you get to the tower for any reason. Pretend they're classified documents that you're delivering. Good luck!"

Sakura passed the scroll to Sasuke, who passed it to Naruto, glancing at one of the scrolls at his waist. Naruto was about to unhook one when something about the scroll felt off; frowning, he channeled a bit of chakra to his hand, and felt it weakly soak it up. Chakra paper.

"Uh, are these things chakra-active?" he asked the proctor.

Anko raised an eyebrow, looking at the scrolls at Naruto's belt. "Storage scrolls, eh? You're an _interesting_ whelp. Yes, they are. Put it in a backpack."

Naruto passed the scroll back to Sasuke, who opened his backpack and shoved the scroll down inside. As he reseated the pack on his back, the proctor waved them on out, and a chuunin came out from behind the tent and beckoned them along the fence—Naruto was disappointed to see that they were going the opposite way from Hinata's team beforehand, but he supposed they couldn't have counted on being able to find each other—nor on each other's help inside the forest, for that matter. They were competitors in this exam.

That thought made him uncomfortable, and he shoved it down inside his brain, instead paying attention to where the chuunin was leading them. There were gates spread all along the fence, and Naruto only really knew the forest in a small area around some two of them; unfortunately, it didn't seem as if they were headed for either of those. They eventually stopped at a gate that Naruto knew nothing about; from what he could tell, it was almost directly across from the main access gates that Naruto used, which led to marginally more friendly areas of the forest. Then, of course, it was an exercise in patient waiting until the chuunin got a call over the radio at his belt.

After a short conversation, the proctor turned to the team. "All right, you three," he said. "The exam is starting. You can go in...now."

There was only a blur as the three leapt up to the treetops.

* * *

They stopped in a circle on a high branch. The trees were really enormous; the branch where they now stood had split several times after leaving the trunk, and it was still wide enough that it seemed almost like the floor of a building. You could have set up a tent on it. The green canopy above filtered and colored the sunlight, though slowly weaving patches of it penetrated through and made bright white spots on the wood. The distance was a weaving of huge tree-trunks disappearing into infinity.

Sasuke spoke with low intensity. "So what's our plan?" he asked, glancing back and forth between the other two. "Go after others, or wait for them to come to us?"

"We should try to find someone," said Naruto. "I...don't want to stay in this forest for any longer than I need to."

Sasuke glanced at him. "Oh, right, you know this place a bit, don't you? Is there anything we should know?"

"I've never been in this area before—I was always in the kind of tamer bits around the other side," he said, indicating the direction. "But...it's safer up in the trees than on the ground, I know that. In some places there's tigers, or at least some sort of big cat, and in other places there are giant spiders, like the size of the tigers, and really creepy and I think poisonous. Oh, and," he shuddered, "watch out for hanging vines."

"Hanging vines?" said Sakura curiously, looking around. "What's wrong with them?"

"Well, it's probably not all of them, but...some of them are like the appendages of some sort of nasty plant that's either carnivorous or...I'm just going to really hope it's carnivorous. I had a bad experience with one once while I was in here." He fell emphatically silent.

Sasuke nodded. "Tigers, spiders, hanging vines. Right. Stay in the trees. We should look for others?"

Naruto nodded in turn. "I've got food and tents and stuff here," he said, indicating the scrolls on his belt. "If we end up needing to stay the night, we can, but it would be nice to get out of here sooner than that. We should try to find someone."

"Probably find people quickest if we follow the perimeter," said Sasuke, glancing at both of them. Naruto nodded, and so did Sakura a moment later. Sasuke jumped off around the circle, and the rest of the team followed.

They had been running—well, jumping through the trees, but that basically was running, to a shinobi—for some half an hour, and by Naruto's reckoning gone almost a quarter of the way around the perimeter of the forest, when Sasuke, looking disgruntled, landed and stopped.

"This isn't working," he said. "Maybe no one else got your memo about staying in the trees?"

Naruto glanced down over the edge of the branch. It was a good two hundred feet down, and the branches in between kept the actual ground from being visible more than intermittently. He had to admit he might easily have missed someone walking at ground level.

"I suppose," he said. "I guess a lot of them are foreigners...wouldn't know anything about forests even generally, let alone this place. Maybe a little lower down?" There were branches all the way from the ground to where they were, but they had gravitated to the higher ones because of the pleasant, open effect left by the clear space under the canopy. Sasuke nodded at this, and they dropped down several tiers, ending up about halfway down.

Naruto looked around. The atmosphere was much more...cramped down here, with branches above as well as below. The ground was much more visible, but they were also much more visible from the ground. Ah, well; that would be unavoidable, and they were after all looking for a fight.

They had continued on for several more minutes, still seeing no one, when Naruto stopped again. Sasuke looked at him questioningly, and he scratched the back of his head with a nervous grin.

"Uh...sorry, but I really kind of need to...." He waved vaguely over the edge of the branch towards the ground.

"Um...you need to...oh. Don't take too long, dobe."

Sakura spoke before he could leave. "Um...what if someone tries to impersonate you coming back? Shouldn't we have some sort of signal?"

Naruto shrugged. "Just quiz me about something like Wave. I'll be right back." He leapt around a tree and disappeared.

Sakura sat down and seemingly started meditating, or something. Sasuke paced. After one minute he growled in frustration; after two he snarled and threw himself down on the branch. "How long can the dobe take?"

Sakura glanced up. "I don't know," she said, absently. Sasuke looked at her. In the Academy, he had been convinced that she was nothing but an annoyance, and that would be the sum total of her character and interactions with him until he managed to find a way to leave her behind. She had surprised him first in Wave, when she managed to leave _him_ behind in their chakra control exercises, and then again, when she had actually seemed prepared to fight on the bridge. True enough, she had never needed to, but he had seen her in passing before his Sharingan had activated itself, and without those eyes he never would have guessed that she was hiding under a genjutsu. If anyone had attacked the image...she would have been in a position to kill them instantly, but any attack less than that would simply have broken the illusion and left her desperately outclassed. Would she have killed?

His reverie was broken by Naruto stumbling back around the tree trunk. "All right, I'm back, guys!" he said boisterously. Sasuke nodded and stood, but something was wrong. He glanced around again, then back at Naruto, and saw it.

"You know, I don't even need to bother quizzing you," he said, squaring into a stance. "That isn't even a good henge. Pay more attention to your target next time! Who are you?" His eyes flared red, and sure enough, the faint haze of chakra usage spread itself over the false Naruto's body, indicating some transformation technique. Sakura's eyes had snapped open at his words, and she now stood, a kunai in one hand, wary.

'Naruto' suddenly grinned, an expression very much unlike anything he had ever seen Naruto make. "Oh, I suppose," he said, his voice strange. "It would have been disappointing if you were fooled by the first thing I tried. Here you are." He suddenly changed, without even any smoke or sound, into someone else entirely, and Sasuke's eyes narrowed.

_He's pretty good. A henge usually makes some sort of noticeable flare when it goes down; that's really good control to get it like that._

The infiltrator wore a Grass-nin's headband and a wide straw hat. He—no, it was a she—had long black hair down her back, and stood on the branch against the trunk of the tree, laughing.

Sasuke studied her, his eyes taking in and memorizing every detail. His mouth tightened immeasurably. "After our scroll, I take it? Where is Naruto?"

The enemy stared at him with creepy, slitted eyes, still laughing. "The idiot? He has more than enough to deal with on his own. As do you, Uchiha Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke growled, taking a kunai out of his pouch. "Do I? We'll see about that."

"I suppose we shall," said she, and suddenly there was _pressure_.

Sasuke's arms fell from their ready stances to his sides as a phantom weight bore down on his mind. He was tiny, helpless, worthless, a crawling insect that would soon be destroyed by his betters. Whoever this person was, Zabuza had nothing on her for pure terror. The kunai in his hand dropped from limp fingers, as his world shrank: all he could see was the face of his enemy, half hidden by the straw hat, her eyes smug and satisfied, smirking in the knowledge that Sasuke was nothing to her, no more a threat than the insects that crawled about on the branch. And Sasuke could only admit that it was true.

"Is this all? Really? The famous Uchiha Clan doesn't seem to amount to much," said the Kusa-nin, still smirking. She deliberately reached into the holster on her leg and drew a kunai. "If you can't even survive this, brat, you're not worth marking. Catch." She tossed the kunai—not even at him, but up, so that it flew in a high arc. Sasuke looked up at it, which took far more effort than it should have, and saw it reach its peak and fall, and it was coming directly toward him, and _he could not move_.

Oddly enough, it was thoughts of Naruto that saved him. The oppressive killing intent that his enemy projected was stronger than any he had ever felt—from a human. But Naruto, when he had lost control in the dome of mirrors, had focused a terror that far outstripped even this, a terror born in the power of the unimaginably strong demon locked inside of him. He remembered the faint echoes of that power that appeared when Naruto fought him as hard as his single body could, and pitted that strength against the pressure that held him in position—and it abated, just the slightest bit. Sasuke moved aside, far slower than he should have, and the descending kunai almost cut his shirt as it fell. Then it thunked into the wood beneath him, alongside his own kunai that he had dropped. Sasuke bent quickly and grabbed it, winging it at the enemy as hard as he could. She dodged aside easily—Sasuke had not had time for any of the wire or deflection tricks that might have actually caught such an enemy—but it broke her focus. Sasuke composed his mind, breathing heavily, and retrieved the other kunai that lay at his feet.

A sound passed over him as of distant thunder, and the enemy stood facing him again, laughing softly. "I congratulate you, Sasuke-kun. You can dodge a slowly thrown kunai."

Sasuke grit his teeth. " _Shut up,_ " he hissed, and threw the kunai at her. She dodged it again, but missed Sasuke's three handseals, and the burst of fire he spat next caught her full-on.

When the fireball dispersed, he saw the enemy's body collapse into a mound of mud, and her voice spoke from behind. "Oh, very nice, Sasuke-kun. Well done. Grossly insufficient, of course, but well done."

Sasuke whipped around, and saw her standing just as arrogantly on the branch further out. He readied himself again, only to feel something familiar running up the trunk behind him. He glanced behind to see Naruto landing beside.

"You're late to the party, dobe," he said tightly, indicating the enemy. Naruto growled.

"Some bastard knocked me off the branch with a wind jutsu, and then set a giant snake on me," he said angrily. "I suppose I should be honored that they felt me dangerous enough to try and split me off, but really I'm just pissed."

"Really, I expected you to be dead," said the Kusa-nin. "Pray, what happened to my snake? He should have been enough to easily destroy a brat like you." This with a grin that made the hair on Sasuke's neck rise.

"Like most things I've found, it turned out to be fatally allergic to explosions," snapped Naruto. "Now, what do you want? There's no way a genin should be able to use summons like that."

The enemy merely laughed. "A wonderful deduction. I'm afraid all you need to know is that I intend to kill you."

Naruto snarled and launched himself at the enemy, moving with a speed that told Sasuke he was boosting hard. Sasuke dodged around to the side, watching the fight while he looked for an opportunity to help Naruto out.

The enemy blocked Naruto's first blow, but the block collapsed several inches under the punch, and a look of surprise flashed across her face. By that time, Naruto was attacking again, but this time the enemy's block held. Naruto kept attacking frenziedly, each blow strong enough to break one of your smaller trees, but it did not avail him. After several seconds, the Kusa-nin slipped a punch through his basically non-existent defense, sending Naruto flying backwards into the tree-trunk.

"Oh, you're a more interesting brat than I'd expected," she said. "Not so interesting as the Uchiha, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless. Not that it matters...."

Sasuke had seen enough. Naruto had tried the brute-force method, and this unknown shinobi had not fallen. Time to see what finesse could do.

He charged forward, his eyes flickering over the enemy, watching her responses, as he opened with a two-part strike, carried out at such speed that no one he knew—except, maybe, that kid in green—could have avoided it. The first sweep knocked her arm aside, but the slamming punch that followed...missed. His eyes narrowed as he recovered, blocking a counterattack to his head. She had twisted aside with inhuman flexibility to avoid his punch—a move he had never seen before, and for good reason. It should have dislocated her hip.

By Sharingan-inspired reflex he blocked her next three strikes, waiting for a chance. It seemed that obvious attacks would not succeed. Outside the fight, he noted Naruto, slowly standing up from his fall with murder in his eyes, and Sakura, hovering uncertainly around the edge, still prepared with her kunai. Those were background concerns, as he noticed an opening and, sliding a punch around her side to attract a block on that side, switched flawlessly into a hard spinning kick.

Again, she dodged it, this time by bending backwards ninety degrees at the waist. Sasuke gaped inwardly as he took up his stance again; one anatomically-impossible dodge was one thing, but two implied a pattern. Who was she? Did she have some sort of crazy _kekkei genkai_ that let her dislocate her joints?

"You seem confused," she said, the same creepy grin on her face. "Are you wondering, Sasuke-kun? Are you set back by impossibilities?"

Sasuke attacked her again, keeping his blows aimed at her center, where she should not have been easily able to move aside. All failed—the majority conventionally blocked, but on occasion, she would pull some dodge that required grossly impossible motions of the hips, shoulders, knees. _What is she doing?_

"I suppose that will be enough," the Kusa-nin said. Then, suddenly impossibly fast, she snaked a punch through his defense, and he flew back into the tree just as Naruto had, nursing his stomach.

"You disappoint me, Sasuke-kun," she said. "I heard so much about the Uchiha genius, I suppose I was building up my expectations." She walked slowly toward him as Sasuke struggled to stand. "Ah, well. I suppose I'll just kill you."

"NO!" came a shout, and the Kusa-nin dodged aside as Naruto passed through the space where she had stood. Her face was contemptuous as Naruto continued. "Fuck you, you BASTARD!"

She curled her lip and made as if to attack Naruto, but he skipped backward and crossed his hands, and in an eruption of smoke they were surrounded to a hundred yards away by clones.

* * *

Naruto dodged backwards from the creepy Kusa-nin's first two strikes, but he knew he couldn't keep that up for long, and these blows were aimed to kill or seriously incapacitate. They probably wouldn't, not on him, but even with the fox's healing factor they'd put him out of the fight, and he couldn't afford that. Whoever she was, this freakishly strong opponent wanted to kill Sasuke. _It would not happen._

He crossed his hands and _slammed_ chakra through a very familiar pattern, and clones filled the forest, clones on their branch, clones on the other branches, clones clinging to the tree trunks, even clones on the ground far below. Two clones jumped forwards to intercept the next two blows, and that was enough time to do a quick sealless switch with another clone, one off near the end of the branch they were on. All the clones had started moving, jumping from place to place around the battlefield, and Naruto followed suit, trying to get closer without standing out too much from the crowd.

Memories dropped into his head, and he swore. The Kusa-nin knew how to deal with shadow clones—any clone that came within five feet was dispersed by a lightning-fast single blow, while all the others were ignored. But Sasuke had gotten up, and regardless of the danger, started attacking the enemy again. This time, it was not so apparently equal. The Kusa-nin was not testing Sasuke's power; she was simply trying to kill him, if not particularly dedicatedly. It was obvious that all of Sasuke's ability went into his frantic dodges and blocks, and she was not even breathing hard.

Naruto did another kawarimi, this time with one of the clones just behind the Kusa-nin. The world had been patterned in lines since first he saw the snake rise to attack him; he drew on the boost again, as much as he could use, and shot forward to attack the enemy.

He did no better now than he had before—every blow he unleashed, no matter their boosted power, was simply blocked as nonchalantly as if he were an Academy student in his first year. But the Kusa-nin had turned her attention away from Sasuke, and he saw a clone grab him and jump away, finding another branch. A burst of memory hit him, showing him Sakura already gone, surrounded by a few other clones.

He exchanged only a few more blows with the Kusa-nin, who appeared to be getting impatient, before dodging back. Without the seal—he did not need it for such a small application—he created another clone and dispersed it immediately, making sure that all the clones around knew his plan. Then he swapped out again, with one of the clones surrounding Sasuke and Sakura on a branch several hundred feet away.

Sasuke turned to him as soon as he swapped in—he could probably see the kawarimi with his Sharingan. "Dobe, what was the idea of dragging us off like that?" he said. Naruto did not answer, but pointed at the branch he had just vacated.

There was a slight glow—Sasuke's jaw dropped, and he figured it was much more noticeable to fancy chakra eyes—and then a brilliant flash of light. A fraction later, there was a deafening roar combined with a noticeable pressure wave, as the nearest thirty clones jumped on the Kusa-nin and detonated themselves. Memories flashed into his mind—some three had been destroyed by those same lightning-fast blows before they could finish the technique, two dozen or so had the impression of careful chakra shaping followed by _pain_ that came with detonation, and then the surrounding several score had the crushing impact of a pressure wave, or painful collision with a tree trunk or the ground after being thrown. He stared at the branch for a moment, which was obscured by smoke, then looked below it. Saw nothing. His clones, somewhat thinned by now, moved in agitated patterns, looking for any hint of what had happened.

One dispersed itself, having caught a view of the branch. He winced—the branch had been pulverized completely at its stump, and the remaining fifty-foot span of it had fallen and broken several more below. He scanned the area below the explosion, getting several clones' views in the meantime, and saw nothing. _She can't have survived that...was there a body at all? Or was she just...vaporized?_

He winced at the thought, but not as much as he might have. She had tried to kill a comrade. Certainly she was more deserving than any individual one of the mercenaries he had killed in Wave, however mad the mob had made them. He turned to his team with a sigh.

"I guess she's—wait!" That was another clone's memories. Something was moving on a tree trunk far below. He turned to the place, and got another clone's memories in the meanwhile. It was...something. What was it?

A clone jumped down to the spot, and was immediately dispersed by something it didn't see. Naruto stiffened.

"Careful! There's still something around!"

Then it appeared. It dropped out of thin air on the same branch where they stood, in the best-controlled shunshin Naruto had ever seen, and it was grotesque. The hair and skin of the Kusa kunoichi they had fought remained...somehow. But it was burned and blasted away in many places, exposing... _something_ below, bleached white skin and amber, snakelike eyes. Where it remained, it dangled in sickening folds, as if the skin was peeling off the enemy's body. Naruto was speechless—the enemy, who he no longer felt comfortable referring to by personal pronouns, had taken the blow of two dozen clones exploding right on top of it. What could kill it?

He stepped forward, in front of Sasuke and Sakura, and crossed his hands. "Kage bunshin—"

"No."

As it spoke, the enemy flashed forwards in an incomprehensible blur to bury a fist wrist-deep in his stomach. He flew backwards ten feet and crashed to the branch, choking, trying to get his breath, his stomach in more pain than he had ever felt. It was all he could do not to black out.

Sasuke stepped forward himself, and stood in his stance, his eyes red and spinning. Naruto would have cried out for him to run, but he could not get a breath. The enemy ignored his preparation for battle, but turned to him, looking him up and down.

"So what am I to do with you? You are stronger than the average, yes, but no genius. If you had been Itachi...but no." He ignored Sasuke's vehement glare. "It might almost be worth it anyway...but a vessel cannot be weak, that would be foolish. Are your eyes worth your weakness? To mark you or to dispose of you?"

It raised a hand to its chin and glanced Sasuke over again. It was so...so _comfortable_. Naruto was sure that the punch that had knocked him down had been the first real exertion the...the _thing_ had put forth during the whole fight—and he still could barely breath, let alone speak or move. He knew with a dreadful certainty that nothing Sasuke could do would scratch this enemy, and he was out of the fight and had already put forth his best. The only thing that had accomplished was to force the enemy to drop its facade of humanity.

_Not your best, not yet,_ whispered a voice in his mind, and he flinched away from it at first. His mind flickered to the memory of Haku in his mask dodging away from the red claws of the fox's shroud, and away in fear.

_No? Why not?_

He remembered Haku, remembered the corrosive anger that had filled him and driven his attacks, the unthinking assaults—

_Do you not need this power now?_

He remembered the seal stirring within him as he made the decision to cut down two hundred defenseless men—

_What else will you do?_

The pain in his stomach was not going away. The enemy still stood in consideration of Sasuke, whose defiant stance was tinged with despair.

_What other choice do you have?_

He clenched his teeth and acquiesced.

The seal was still open, lines and points still patterned the world, and he spoke in his mind. _Fox, give me power!_

And power flowed through him.

As the chakra shroud formed, he felt it working within his abdomen, and the pain subsided. Able to breathe again, he stood, and saw red.

The enemy saw, and cocked its head to the side. "Oh? What are you, then? You don't seem amenable to my trying to kill you today."

Naruto ignored its words, but lunged forwards as quickly as he could, reveling in the fox's speed. He slashed at the enemy with a wide sweep of his arm, and the shroud around his hand raced forward in answer, forming long red claws that sliced through the air towards the enemy's chest. It leapt backward with the same speed that had stuck Naruto down just moments before, and he cursed mentally as he realized that it was faster than he even with his shroud.

_Have to keep it off guard, surprise it, press it or we'll all die!_ he thought frantically, crouching on the branch to face the enemy. He saw it recovering and preparing to strike, and some instinct prompted him to look around again. And this time, he _saw_ what he had tried to ignore for so long, and an instinct like that which told him to slash rather than strike told him how to use it.

A twisting black line ran along the branch between himself and the enemy, and as it readied another dashing killing blow, he _slashed_ again, and the chakra shroud jumped to his will. Its claws traced the line from end to end, and the whole hundred-foot remaining length of the branch he stood on broke off and began to fall.

The enemy froze, and glanced from side to side in momentary surprise before leaping up and backwards off the falling branch. Naruto roared in triumph and lunged forward in a long jump off the broken end, high and towards the enemy. Then, in mid-air, he crossed his hands and made clones again, dumping the red chakra into the technique. Five clones appeared around him, and each had the face and hands of madness that the fox lent him, and each had its own shroud. All of them grabbed each other and pushed off for nearby branches, aiming to surround the enemy and hem it in.

The push sent Naruto on a trajectory to intercept the enemy just as it landed on another branch across a large gap. He dropped down from above, the shroud around his hand flaring in preparation, and he saw the enemy brace to receive his attack. Roaring, he sliced downward, the immaterial claws forming to his will, focusing tightly on the arm that the enemy used to block. The blow landed just as Naruto crashed down on the thing's head. Then things happened very quickly. Its other arm came up and threw Naruto off to the side with terrible force, but the fall that would have at least knocked him out otherwise came slowly enough that in the shroud he was able to tuck, roll and slide to his feet. He turned to the enemy and growled defiance, and saw it staring fixedly at its arm, which was dripping blood.

Naruto cut off its introspection with another charge, swinging the claws of his shroud, but the enemy jumped backwards again, dodging effortlessly. It seemed leery to come within his range again, but that by no means exhausted its options; Naruto saw it flicking through seals and dodged around the underside of the branch like a squirrel. Above him, he heard a roar and smelled burning wood. As he rounded the branch again and faced the enemy, the wood was hot beneath his feet, and a hole two feet deep was burned in the branch behind him, right where he had stood.

He could not cut the branch again—this time, the enemy was between him and the trunk—so he simply charged. But the enemy had gotten his measure now, and flicked through the same seals again. Naruto jumped up and over its head, and saw a raging stream of fire shoot out of the enemy's mouth, first striking the branch where he had stood, then turning to track on him. It had almost brushed the edge of the shroud before the technique ended, and Naruto landed on the trunk of the tree with a growl. He had not yet decided what to do when the enemy used the same technique again. Having no option, he let go of the trunk with the short claws on his hands and dropped.

The trunk was nearly cut in two by the impact of the firestorm above him, and he had dropped some ten feet below the branch before he got his grip again. Then, without warning, he saw a flash of red as one of his clones dropped in to attack the enemy from above, and after several seconds there was another burst of memory: the clone's chakra shroud had deflected the enemy's first thrown weapons, but it had gotten around that by simply entering the clone's guard and stabbing it with a kunai.

He had no more time to think about it before the enemy ran around to the bottom of the branch and, taking aim at Naruto, shot the same stream of fire at him again. Naruto ran frantically around the trunk, hoping desperately that the technique wouldn't burn through and hit him anyway, and became puzzled when the burning red glow of the jutsu ceased after only a moment.

_It could have burned through and gotten me...but that would have dropped the tree where it was standing! Of course!_

He darted around the tree's trunk again and glanced up at the enemy, who was still hanging from the underside of the branch. The lines on the branch were out of reach...but....

An echo ran through his mind, one of the Kyuubi's typically unhelpful replies. **If you stab a thing in its points, it will be destroyed.**

He dodged around the trunk, yet again, just ahead of another of those infuriating _katon_ flamethrowers. Seriously, did this thing have only that one trick? Not that it wasn't effective, but still!

The trunk of the tree was patterned with lines, in a grid wider than he had ever seen on anything else. There were a good ten feet between the closest ones he could see; he picked the nearer one and ran along it, and—there! Three lines met in an ugly little blotch.

He did not even consider drawing a kunai; after all, didn't he have claws? They were perhaps an inch long, and looked almost as if he had simply grown his nails out and filed them to points, but he knew for a fact that that gimmick would not have lasted a moment under the stresses of clinging to a tree. Without further thought, he buried his right index finger in the point as far as it would go.

The result was dramatic. There was no sound, but the tree in its entirety seemed to stiffen somehow, as if drawing itself up—then, without warning, it collapsed.

It split along every line upon it, falling straight down in a clatter of pieces. Naruto felt himself falling, and jumped, pushing off the bit of tree that he had clung to. The enemy had done the same, intermittently visible between the hail of huge boles.

Then, suddenly, there was a clear space. Naruto's eyes locked on the enemy just as the enemy saw him, and its grotesque face twisted in what might have been an attempt at anger, and it flicked through a now-familiar string of seals. Naruto glanced around in sudden panic, but there was nothing around to push against, and no time to make a clone—

And Naruto felt something that he had never felt before, a strange lifting-tugging-pulling, and suddenly he was _elsewhere,_ clinging to the branch of a tree high above the falling chunks of wood. Then, below him and off to the left, he saw a familiar burst of glowing red, and he quickly oriented himself. And only a second later, he received a burst of memories, with the clone's point of view on the tree's destruction, its quick intuition of what had happened, its desperate _kawarimi_ when it saw Naruto in danger, and then _heat_ and _pain_ when the enemy's attack struck. Naruto bared his teeth and snarled. The clone's secondhand chakra shroud had held for almost a second before the fire burned through, but he did not want to test out the real thing.

He jumped off and down, to another branch that overlooked the destroyed tree from closer by, and tried to keep an eye on the location of the falling enemy. He watched it for several seconds, then lost it in the chaos of falling wood and growled. The thing was _dangerous_ , and knowing that it was in free-fall far away from him was a good thing. Having it skulking around preparing a counterattack was not.

He jumped again, gaining altitude this time, searching all the while. All his searching was in vain, however, until another burst of rather painful memory broke over him, almost making him miss his landing.

_There._ That was where the clone that the enemy had just dispelled had been. He was close—

It came out from around a trunk in its full grotesque fury. Naruto landed on the branch in front of it, growling, and it charged at him, flicking through the same seals that it had been using all along. Naruto ran around the bottom of the branch in a twisty maneuver, and came up behind the enemy, the branch in front of it smoldering.

It was just turning around as he finished the kawarimi, and the clone exploded only a moment later.

Naruto had thought that he had given himself plenty of distance from the clone, but apparently demonic chakra did strange and power-boosting things to explosive techniques. He was stripped from the branch he clung to as the shockwave passed him, making the branch itself bend precipitously to the side and creak in protest. He oriented himself quickly and aimed for another branch far below.

As he landed, the thing appeared in front of him with another shunshin.

"That's twice you've made me run," it said, its voice impossible to distinguish by gender, but cold as ice and angrier. "No more."

It started flickering through another chain of seals, this one longer, and, Naruto realized, almost certainly deadlier than any before.

He charged at the enemy, swinging with the claws of the shroud, but it disappeared, and in a desperate whirl Naruto found it behind him. His mind screamed in protest. _It did a shunshin while it was in the middle of another technique? How—that's impossible—_

The enemy obviously did not care for Naruto's definitions of possible or impossible; it finished the sequence, and fire from no discernible source flared up around him, burning through the shroud in seconds. He screamed in pain, and at the same time memories crashed over him, each of his clones expiring in similar pain. Though the fire ceased in only a few more seconds, it left him bent over, the shroud flickering around him as it attempted to heal the burns.

He never saw what happened next.

* * *

Sasuke held his stance out of habit and an edge of stony stubbornness, but he did not flatter himself that he had the slightest chance. The Kusa-nin had survived the biggest explosion Sasuke had ever seen Naruto make, and despite the fact that her skin was sloughing off in strips, she still stood nonchalantly as ever in front of him, thinking him over aloud as if the witnesses were less than ants. Naruto lay hacking on the ground ten feet away—she had put him down with a single punch, and from experience Sasuke did not want to take the blow that could do that.

And then a feeling manifested and started to grow, and after only a few seconds became oppressive. It was familiar, this power, though he had only felt it in full when already incapacitated. As the pressure of the aura increased, it started affecting him—his hands dropped from their positions as his concentration went to maintaining his Sharingan—the back of his mind yelped frantically for him to run, run, run until his legs collapsed—but there was an obscure sort of comfort, even in the terror of the fox's presence, in knowing that its anger was not focused on him, but on his enemy in his defense.

Naruto had stood, throwing off his previous damage like a cloak, and the mauled Kusa-nin turned her attention to him, looking away from Sasuke for a moment. Then he lunged forward with frightening speed; the slash that the Kusa-nin dodged nearly caught Sasuke as well, and he danced backward toward the tree's trunk. Sakura was behind him, looking frightened, and he grabbed her by the hand.

"Come on! Run! They're both beyond us now!"

He jumped, just as Naruto somehow sliced the whole branch off at its thickest, and the Kusa-nin jumped away. He landed just ahead of Sakura on another branch, higher up, and Sasuke watched over the edge for a moment as Naruto, visible as a red flame in the comparative darkness of the forest, created clones that glowed with their own shrouds and jumped for the enemy's throat again.

He straightened and turned to Sakura. "We should try to stay out of the way. Naruto is...I don't know, but I think he might hurt us by accident, when he's in that form, and the other...whatever she is...well, we don't want to get between them."

Sakura nodded quite readily at this.

Sasuke glanced over the edge again as a flare of fire lit up the vicinity. That was a _katon_ jutsu, and a big one—not Naruto, then. What was happening?

He managed to stand for less than a minute before he began pacing, and after that it was only another few seconds before he lost his patience completely. A look over the edge saw another few of the same fire technique, but the real surprise came a few seconds later, when the entire tree nearest where the fire had flared last seemed to shiver and collapse.

Sasuke jumped convulsively as the tree broke, then again to the side as a huge chunk of former branch dropped down past him, far too close for comfort. He stared down again, but couldn't see anything.

_That's it—_

He turned back to Sakura. "I'm going to go see what's going on. Stay here."

She nodded, looking equal parts frightened and bewildered. Sasuke, after a moment's thought, crossed his hands in a seal that he had only used a few times since he learned it, and pushed chakra through the pattern, deliberately driving himself as far as he could. It took just about all the chakra he could muster, but he finished it, and when the technique released itself three clones appeared beside him on the branch.

Sasuke bent over, panting furiously. It took several seconds for him to be able to stand properly, and still he felt as if he had just run thrice around the forest at speed.

He fumbled something out of a pocket, stared at it. A circle bound by a sealed knot looked back at him, and after a moment's thought, he pressed it to his arm and triggered it with a minuscule application of chakra.

Power rushed through him, addicting and strengthening. The flow ceased after a few moments, but the power remained; Sasuke's former fatigue had disappeared without a trace, and now he felt like he was practically buzzing. He laughed involuntarily.

"Note to self: Thank the dobe for the tags," he said. Sakura looked on with an analytical stare.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Recon," he said briefly in reply. One of his clones had glanced at him and raised an eyebrow.

"Experiment?" it inquired, in precisely his voice. Sasuke passed it one of the tags, and it imitated him with its application. There was a subtle change in its stance as the tag fuelled it, and it dropped the empty tag—the circle now broken at the top—with a predatory grin.

"Oh, _yes_ ," it said, and Sasuke returned the grin as he passed tags to the other two clones.

A quick exchange of glances assigned the clones to their duties: two of them stayed behind with Sakura, and one followed Sasuke as he leapt off the branch. He scanned around for movement or the red flare of Naruto's shroud, and saw both just at the juncture of trunk and branch on another tree, below him and not far away. Naruto—or one of his clones—clung to the branch, scanning the area urgently. The Kusa-nin came out of a shunshin just behind him along the branch; Naruto whirled in a blur of speed, and lunged for her, but she ran through a sequence of four seals—Sasuke narrowed his eyes as he memorized it—and blew a scorching stream of fire at him.

The fire engulfed him, and he vanished with a puff of smoke. _A clone, then...._ Sasuke wondered about that fire technique, even as he ran along the branch to keep the Kusa-nin in sight as she jumped around the tree. It was obviously being shortened; his _Goukakyuu_ took eight seals in full, and it was one of the simplest fire techniques, emphasizing pure power over any clever or efficient chakra shaping. Something with more finesse would require more seals—and he still couldn't copy techniques that were being shortened; his eyes as yet could only copy the handseals, not the chakra shaping itself.

Another Naruto landed on the branch in front of the Kusa-nin, and she flashed through the same seals again. Sasuke stared at her more closely this time. He could see the glow of chakra being concentrated as she inhaled to release the technique, and he could see the flow as she blew it out in a line of blazing flame. But it was like trying to analyze the movements of that ice-user on the bridge before his Sharingan activated—moving too fast, too much happening, for him to see.

This time, Naruto ran around the underside of the branch to dodge the technique, and came up behind the Kusa-nin. Chakra moved within him, this time, before quickly resolving in apparent futility; Sasuke had seen this pattern before, though, and it was trivial compared to that fire technique. Naruto had just done another of his sealless replacements, which meant that what was standing there now was probably a clone—

Even as the Kusa-nin started through her four seals again, chakra built up around the clone, moving in convoluted and intricate swirls more complex even than her fire technique, but also familiar. Sasuke's eyes widened, and he ducked around behind the branch that he stood on, the clone alongside him following suit. Then just a moment later, the entire forest around them was momentarily illuminated as if the sun had penetrated the canopy, and the branch that they clung to whipped back and forth in creaking protest. Sasuke shook his head convulsively, his ears messed up again from the sound of the pressure wave, and as the branch stilled again he walked around the top of it and stared at the place where the explosion had been. The branch was gone, obliterated; nothing else was in evidence. He frowned, glancing around the area— _movement—_

He stared at the place where he had seen it: Naruto stood there, or one of him, anyway, and the Kusa-nin had just come out of a shunshin. It was too far to see—he had to get closer—he pointed to the place and glanced at his clone, who nodded, and then he formed a ram seal and _concentrated,_ and he was on a branch that overlooked them from closer by.

As he watched, the grotesque enemy began another series of seals, and he stared at her more closely. Then, as he realized what was happening, he watched with a sudden furious intensity: fire-natured chakra was building up in the Kusa-nin, but also around Naruto. Then, as Naruto lunged forward, many things happened at once, and his eyes began to hurt. The chakra that tracked Naruto, building up ominously by now, stayed with him as he attacked; but there was no one where he struck. The enemy had disappeared in a shunshin just from one side of Naruto to the other, and the chakra pattern of the shunshin in her body resonated uneasily with the fire technique that was still forming. Sasuke stared at the interaction, fascinated; there was no way it should have been possible to do a sealless shunshin while in the middle of another technique, not without collapsing the other one with unknown consequences. But the Kusa-nin had done it.

Then the technique finished, the chakra in the Kusa-nin's body making that peculiar resolving twist that most techniques seemed to share, and sun-bright flames burst into existence around Naruto. He screamed, the sound made more like a roar of anger by the fox's influence, as he fell into a crouch, the red shroud around him contending with the flames. Sasuke watched as the technique ended, Naruto still bent over, and wondered if it had managed to put him out of the fight—incredibly difficult, when he was in his shroud. Then the Kusa-nin began another technique, and Sasuke suddenly focused intently on the chakra within her; it was not a fire technique, this time. The pain in his eyes spiked, but he ignored it, watching the few seals, but focusing on the chakra molding. He could almost see it—it was just there, hiding behind a door in his mind—

He _saw,_ and knew what would happen, and jumped forward in fruitless intervention, too late. "Crushing Impact," he whispered, almost in despair, and saw the Kusa-nin release the technique, and thrust forward a hand. And Naruto was caught and smashed backwards, as if by a sledgehammer the size of one of those trees, and in seeming slow motion Sasuke watched him fly off the branch, at least one arm bent somewhere it shouldn't be, his legs flailing, and there was something wrong in his ribs or something, and was his head pointed the right way?—

He landed on the branch in front of the Kusa-nin, and she laughed, the sound high and eerie. He turned to her, his face set. A glance up to where his clone still waited, and it got his message, and vanished in a shunshin.

"Your teammate was more interesting than you," she said. "Who would have guessed it? The genius Uchiha, surpassed by a clanless orphan. Of course, he does have his certain advantages...."

Sasuke slowly, deliberately, set his feet in position, and locked his hands where the stance demanded them. He could _see_ , now, and as the Kusa-nin laughed and charged him, she seemed to be moving in even slower motion than usual when he fought with the Sharingan. The first blow she sent out was formidable, but he could _see_ it, and he dodged down and aside and returned with a strike at her hip. And then, when she twisted aside in the same impossible move that she had used so liberally when he had fought her before, he could _see_ chakra moving there, and _see_ how her body moved aside, and he turned the punch into a sideways chop that caught her off-guard.

He disengaged, leaving the range of her dangerously strong blows, and she stared at him with more interest than before, her grotesque face making it difficult to precisely discern her intent. Sasuke gritted his teeth. It wasn't working—taijutsu wouldn't work on this level of opponent, he just wasn't strong enough to do enough damage to put her down. He needed to catch her with something big—but she wouldn't give him enough time. But how...

He put his hands together and disappeared, landing on the branch next to Sakura and his two remaining clones. He pointed at one of them at random, and it nodded, following him as he disappeared again back to another branch, this one overlooking the enemy, who was glancing around almost casually. They then split up—Sasuke jumped off to one side, while his clone landed directly in front of the Kusa-nin. She saw the clone, grinned, and charged it, and it leapt backwards, pulling kunai and shuriken out of pouches and throwing them. The enemy grinned and dodged, avoiding each one perfectly. The clone was getting hard pressed to keep the range open when it successfully pulled a deflexion; three shuriken collided in midair, and one of them, deflected from its original course just the tiniest bit, struck the enemy in the side.

She only laughed and ignored it, closing quickly on the clone. It was hugely outclassed in taijutsu; Sasuke, watching, could tell that it was not actually attacking at all, and only just barely managing to dodge each strike. Time to move.

He shunshinned just behind her and flicked through seals. The _Goukakyuu no Jutsu_ had eight seals in its full invocation, how he had learned it, and by the time he had used it against Kakashi during their tests he had been able to do it in five. After much practice, both before and after the mission to Wave, he had gotten it down to three seals, and he finished them as fast as he ever had. She was just turning around, having heard or sensed his shunshin, when he finished the technique and blew fire at her to engulf her entirely. He was still buzzing with energy from Naruto's chakra tag earlier, and he pushed as much chakra into the technique as he could, more than he had ever used on an attack. The fireball could have melted a kunai.

He was panting as he finished it, and he contemplated using another chakra tag, but decided that it could wait until he was sure there was no threat. The fire had dissipated, and the dust it kicked up was clearing; Sasuke stared fixedly into the circle, trying to get a glimpse of the enemy, and saw nothing at first.

Then there was a swirl in the dust, and he saw it. The enemy—but was it her? It was not the same person. The skin that had been coming off in strips was now completely gone, leaving behind unblemished white. The face was entirely different, unmistakably male with long, black hair. Her—no, his eyes were snakelike and golden green, and his clothes were burned away in patches, showing undamaged skin beneath.

Sasuke boggled. _What? How? I suppose if he could take Naruto's explosion—but why does he look different now? Was that some sort of disguise?_

The enemy was laughing delightedly now, unabashedly amused. "Oh ho! So you are interesting, after all, Sasuke-kun! I suppose you are worth your mark. I congratulate you!"

Sasuke growled and began hand seals again, but he was preempted. Without seals, without anything but a strange burst of chakra, the man's head rose up towards the canopy above, his neck stretching out like rubber, and dived toward him. He gaped for a moment, then tried to dodge aside, but it did no good. The enemy's head followed him, homing in with dreadful precision on his neck, and bit him hard with snakelike fangs just above his shoulder.

He felt the bite strike him, and weakness shot through his legs, and he fell to his knees, a hand clamped on his neck to stem the needlelike pain. Then, abruptly, there was a new pain, a thousand times worse; his neck was on fire, and it was bleeding fire throughout his body, spreading. He tried to shout, but it came out as a gasp. As darkness closed in over his vision, the last thing he saw was the head returning to the shoulders of the man who had bitten him, and his long, malevolent laugh.


	12. Assassins

Sakura sat in a cave formed from a twisted, upthrust ball of roots, and fretted.

Naruto and Sasuke were both out of action. In Naruto's case, the cause was horribly evident: whatever that impossible shinobi had done to him had left him terribly mangled. Though she had never dealt with any of those wounds in reality before, she recognized them from her medical reading. His left arm was broken in three places, he seemed to have at least two broken ribs, and he had somehow broken his nose. When she found him, he had had ugly bruises painted all up and down the front of his body, and all over his face. Those were mostly gone, even after the barely six hours since their attacker had disappeared; she had known, in an academic sense, that he healed quickly, and the mission to Wave had explained why, but she had never seen the effects so clearly. The occasional flicker of red chakra still licked out from time to time around his wounds, unnerving her. She had straightened his arm and attempted to line up the breaks, but she didn't know what else she could do for him; it seemed likely that the demon would do more good for him then she ever could, at least without knowing medical ninjutsu.

With Sasuke, she was at even more of a loss. He did not seem injured in the slightest, but he would not wake, and his face seemed contorted with pain. Just recently he had began running a high fever, and though she cooled his face as best she could it did not improve. The only source she could think of for his distress was the three-tomoe mark on his neck, which glowed with a malignant energy, like and yet unlike Naruto's tangible red chakra. But she had never seen anything like it before, and she could not find any sort of way to relieve his pain. Instead, she sat, and fretted, changing the wet cloth over his forehead whenever it dried.

When she was in the Academy, she had pursued Sasuke because he was strong, and because of the strange luster that hung over his name after he became the last loyal member of his clan—not to mention the fact that once her competition with Ino became established, it would be anathema to simply give up and let her win. But his aloofness and lack of response had made him an ideal, rather than a person—of the many girls in the class who chased Sasuke, she didn't know any of them who actually had any sort of idea what it might be like if they caught him. Her vision of such a relationship had been a vague affair involving said boy suddenly and mysteriously becoming smitten with her and sweeping her off her feet; it had not taken her long at all, once she had been assigned a team with him, to know that it had been pure fantasy. Certainly she had never envisioned anything like this. She didn't think anyone who pursued him had thought that he might be brought low; his status as the Rookie of the Year, invincible to any in their age group, had been a matter of pride.

_Stupid,_ she thought, moodily. _Stupid, useless, weak—why can't I ever do anything?_

Sasuke had never responded to the advances of his admirers in the slightest. He was polite, barely, when they approached him, but always answered in the fewest possible words, and never continued a conversation. Nor had he ever outright rebuffed them—the closest Sakura had ever seen him come to that, before they had begun to work together as a team, had been during their introductions to Kakashi, when he commented frostily about disliking weakness. Then he had slipped back into a routine of ignoring her unless she spoke to him directly, in which case he would just barely skirt the edges of shutting her down outright. And that had gone on until the mission to Wave, when she had so quickly mastered their chakra control exercises.

She was confused, she decided, which was not exactly a momentous revelation but at least gave her something to focus on. He had been politely dismissive, until he had stopped—had actually spoken to her, seemed to respect her. And then, after a month of that new status quo, there had been that...incident before the first exam, when he had actually shut her down hard—along with Ino, admittedly. What was that supposed to mean?

He groaned and shifted, and Sakura turned to him hurriedly. Nothing seemed to have precipitated the movement, and the cloth on his forehead was still relatively fresh, but just to feel as if she was doing something she prepared a new one anyway, and spread the other out over a root to air dry.

Her first clue that things had gone wrong—or more wrong; things had gone _wrong_ as soon as someone who had to be jounin level at least decided to try to kill them all—had come when Sasuke's clone left with her had vanished abruptly. The explosions and the glow of fire had ceased after that, as well, and there had been a good five minutes of frightening silence before she had taken matters into her own hands and gone out looking. There had been no sign of their enemy—no sign of movement at all, in fact. She had found Sasuke fallen and in pain on a branch far away, and Naruto laid out in all his broken glory on another branch just above the ground. Strangely enough, nothing in his position had indicated that he had fallen onto it, and none of his injuries were on his back; it looked more as if he had been laid out there by someone unknown. She wondered again just how the fight had gone. But that was all in the past. The facts were that both of her teammates, whose protection she had been counting on in the knowledge that she herself was below average in combat, were incapacitated. It was up to her until such time as they woke—and she was not at all confident in her ability. It had been enough of a struggle just moving them both to safety and rest, and though she had defended the clearing as well as she could, she couldn't help but fear that if they were attacked she would be grossly out of her league.

Sakura sat under the root-ball, hidden from direct view of anyone outside, surrounded by the subtlest traps she could dream up, and fretted.

* * *

It was pure chance that Hinata happened to have her eyes open when she saw the flare. She was tasked with reconnaissance, naturally, and a foresightful perspective on chakra usage and the length of the exam mandated that she not waste her energy keeping them open constantly. So she merely opened them for long enough to scan the area around them every minute or so, then let them go—much though it wrenched her to relinquish that godlike perspective. With her Byakugan active, she could almost believe that she was strong; when she released it, she was forced back into the universe as a mortal, and she remembered the truth.

It was during one of those scans that she saw it—a bright flare of blue chakra, far away. It was outside the actual range of her sight—she could not see everything in more than a sphere some fifty yards in radius—but the Byakugan saw chakra; such a flare was as visible as an explosion would be to her mere eyes. She stopped on her branch with a gasp.

Kiba, of course, turned to her immediately and wanted to know what was wrong.

"Ah...over that way, someone just did something...big," she said, pointing. "Released a lot of chakra, more than I've ever seen at once."

Kiba frowned. "Should we go over and check it out?"

Shino cut in in his usual monotone. "Logically, being rookies, we are among the weakest competitors in this examination. During unrestricted combat phases, it would seem ill-advised to unnecessarily increase our proximity to combatants who are capable of extremely powerful techniques."

Kiba took it in stride, merely taking several seconds to work out in his head what Shino meant. "Hey, we're not that weak! And if we run away from anyone who's stronger than us at all, how are we going to get stronger?"

Shino pushed his glasses up his nose, which was one of his tells for _I am annoyed at Kiba right now_. "By a similar argument, how are we to achieve greater strength if we are killed by such an opponent?"

Hinata frowned—something about that didn't seem right, but she couldn't remember why. Something told her that she should know something about who was near that flare, but she did not know what.

Kiba shook his head violently at Shino before stopping suddenly at Akamaru's whine of protest. "We won't get killed! We just need to be kinda-sorta careful and not jump in straight away. We can go look!"

"And what purpose would that serve? We are unlikely to be able to retrieve a scroll from any team whose members are so powerful as Hinata-san has suggested. Therefore, a reconnaissance would have no purpose except to satisfy our personal curiosity. I believe that this is an insufficient potential gain to justify the risk of our scroll and possibly our safety."

Kiba growled at him. "Coward."

Shino pushed his glasses up his nose again. "No. Merely prudent. If anything, we should move away from the area. Such techniques as Hinata-san describes are likely to affect large areas indiscriminately. Simply being nearby might be a hazard."

Hinata spoke up. "Ano...we are far enough away that we shouldn't be in danger from any techniques right now. I will keep my eyes open to see if anything more happens...but there shouldn't be a problem with just going on the way we are now." Their interrupted course had taken them just perpendicular to the line towards the flare.

Shino turned to her, contemplated for a moment, then nodded. "Very well."

Kiba grumbled, but gave in.

As they continued moving, Hinata kept her eyes open and her focus on the area to their right where the flare had been, and she could not get the idea out of her head that she was forgetting something important.

It was not more than a few minutes later when she saw the second flare—this one very different. This one was red, and seemed malevolent somehow. She stopped and turned to watch as the flare diminished, but it did not fully disappear. Instead, it turned to a steady patch of red, dimly visible through all that was between them, like the last coals of a campfire.

This time it was Shino who first noticed and queried her. "There is another manifestation?"

She nodded, keeping her attention on the red flare, which brightened and darkened sporadically. "It's something strange...it's continuous, so it might be...maybe a really powerful henge? But that wouldn't do it...I can't think of anything I know of that would look like this."

Shino contemplated that for a moment, then spoke. "That would seem to provide additional motivation to maintain our distance."

Hinata frowned. Something about that felt wrong...and the voice that told her that she was missing something had started yammering at her when she saw the new phenomenon. But she still could not place it, so she remained quiet. Kiba, beside her, frowned.

"That's weird...what should we do?"

"I propose that we continue as we are," said Shino. "Unless, Hinata-san, you believe that what you see poses a threat to us?"

"N-no...I don't know what it is, but we're far enough away...."

"Very well. Let us continue." They moved again along the same path.

Hinata kept an eye on the odd vision, as it flared up, grew, shrank. Still she felt that it should have been familiar. What was it that had made that first release? What was it that _could_? She had seen even her father practicing the _kaiten_ , and it did not compare to the power behind that first blue flare. The only person she had ever seen to have more chakra than her father was...was....

_A huge release, without much control—bigger than my father would be able to do—and that red chakra—like whatever that seal did! Naruto-kun!_

She only just managed to restrain her gasp of realization, and she stopped again on the next branch, turning to watch the patch of red with sudden, intense concentration. And as she watched, the glow suddenly dimmed sharply, then after only a moment disappeared.

_—Naruto-kun!_

She didn't think, nor alert her teammates, who had just noticed her pause and landed back on the branch next to her. She merely jumped away, this time straight toward the location of the no-longer-mysterious flares.

She vaguely heard Kiba, behind her, yelling at her to explain, but her teammates were both still following her, so she dismissed the concern as secondary. Her mind was in turmoil. After the initial panic, she had reminded herself that she had no idea whether Naruto was actually in trouble at all; he might just as well have simply stopped doing...whatever it was that he was doing. But something about the awful suddenness of the cutoff led her to believe that...that something bad had happened. And until she was sure, she wouldn't be able to stop worrying about him.

Despite her eyes, she was so preoccupied that she almost ran straight across the confrontation. Instead, she stopped suddenly, on a branch just overlooking a clearing, where three older genin in gray faced off against three who looked to be their own age. At a second look, she shivered. The younger group were the Suna team who Naruto had warned her against, back at the beginning. The two older ones flanked the red-haired youngest several steps back, and his expression was flat, his face set.

The biggest of the older group—scarred, his face contemptuous under an Ame hitai-ite—finished some flamboyant boast, then drew the poles slung across his back, which revealed themselves as large umbrellas. With a shout, he flung them into the air above them, where they hovered, spinning. Hinata saw chakra gathering itself around them, and in a fit of alarm jumped up to a higher branch, where she could look down on them from above.

Kiba and Shino joined her a moment later, not a moment too soon, as a truly surprising number of senbon shot out from the rotating umbrellas, curving around in varying paths to converge on the boy with the gourd on his back. Hinata winced as she saw several of them passing straight over the branch where she had stood just a moment before.

The rain of needles, sparse at first, quickly grew to such a volume that the air around its target was choked with dust, and anyone would have sworn that the Suna boy must have been killed outright. Hinata could see better, through the obscuring clouds of dust. Something rose with blurring speed from the gourd on his back, something drenched in a strange chakra, unlike that of the boy himself. It quickly composed itself into a spherical wall surrounding him, the first of the needles burying themselves half inside the defense. The rest quickly followed, until the wall was so studded with needles that one might mistake it for some arcane weapon—perhaps designed to roll menacingly down a slope at someone as part of a trap.

Her gasp attracted Kiba's attention, and he turned to her. "What is it? What do you see?"

Hinata could not find the words to describe it; after a moment, she gave up, and just gestured towards the dust cloud, which was beginning to clear. Kiba peered at it for a moment, then, catching a glimpse of what lay inside, gasped himself. As Hinata began to see the chakra-infused wall with a more human perspective as well as the strange all-encompassing view of the Byakugan, it began to crumble, depositing the needles in a ring around the Suna boy's feet. All the while, he had not moved, nor had his flat, emotionless expression changed. He remained standing in the same place, his arms crossed in front of him, as if all the efforts of the enemy were worth no more notice than the breeze that played around their faces.

His face remained similarly expressionless as he spoke flatly. "Sabaku kyuu!" As he thrust a hand out forwards, the stuff of the wall flowed around him towards the Ame-nin with terrible speed. Seeing it move directly, Hinata realized that it was desert sand, somehow animated by the odd chakra inside it, and bound to the redhead's will.

It wrapped around the tall shinobi as if as claw-tipped tendrils, quickly binding him all around, wrapping him entirely in a vertical coffin. Then, without further ceremony, the Suna boy closed his hand, and the sand crushed inward. Blood spurted out as if from an explosion.

Everyone watching the scene, except the three Suna-nin, reacted to the shock at once. Hinata gasped quietly and grabbed at the branch, suddenly feeling slightly unbalanced. Shino's face was mostly hidden, but his jaw clenched and the muscles around his eyes tightened. Kiba let out a loud oath, staring at the sand.

The dead Ame-nin's teammates were gaping in sudden terror. One of them was fumbling with something on his pack; he held out a scroll, stammering out pleas for his life, and tossed it down between himself and the Suna-nin.

His pleas availed him nothing. With snakelike quickness, the sand wrapped itself around the two shinobi, and crushed them both as thoroughly as it had their teammate.

One of the two older Sand genin—the boy in the cat-eared hood—picked his way over the bloody sand to the scroll, a look of distaste on his face. He picked it up and glanced at it. "Hey, it's even the Heaven scroll! Good luck!"

The girl with the large, odd weapon across her back nodded and tightened the straps that held it on, obviously preparing to move out. The redhead, though, was restless, staring around. At the girl's tentative query, he snapped in a flat voice. "No. It was not enough."

Both his teammates turned to him in sudden fear, and the boy in the cat-hood spoke hesitantly. "Gaara...could you please just let it go? We have both scrolls now. We should just get to the center and get it over with. Okay?"

The boy's—Gaara's—head came up, and he stared at his teammate with dreadful coldness. "No," he said, his voice emotionless. Then his head snapped around, homing in on the branch where Team 8 stood, and he reached his hand upward, as if to grab them.

Sand poured upwards in a malevolent rush, and only the few seconds it took to reach the high branch saved them. All three jumped at the same time, up and away. Behind them, the sand crashed into the branch, and Hinata shuddered as she landed, seeing it scour off the bark.

The sand rose after them again, and they simply ran. It was five minutes since they had last seen the malevolent sand before they stopped by mutual accord, and all of them were breathing heavily.

Kiba stared back along their track, his eyes haunted. "Wow...."

Hinata merely shivered.

It took her nearly another minute afterward to remember what she had been rushing towards when she had run across the encounter, and when they moved out again she steered them towards the area as best she could.

* * *

Sakura hid and shivered as she heard the footsteps running through the trees above. Twice this had happened before that afternoon, and once they had even gotten close enough for her to hear raucous voices, but they had never intruded into the area covered by the traps, or into the prepared genjutsu that covered the clearing itself.

She flashed back to Kakashi's conversation with her, when they had all gone off with shadow clones after they finished with water-walking in the Land of Waves. He had demonstrated a bit of the utility of fighting from under a prepared genjutsu, then sat her down.

"Sakura, at the moment, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that you're not really a front-line fighter."

She had nodded shamefacedly.

"That's good that you know it. And usually, in a mission when you're fighting, your job will be to hang back and support Naruto and Sasuke. That's what the genjutsu and the medical ninjutsu are really good for, and you show every sign of being excellent at both." He had paused before continuing. "But sometimes, that's not an option. Sometimes you might find yourself in a position where they've both been put out of the fight and you need to take care of them. It happens surprisingly often, if you're outclassed as a team and you stayed back the way you should. And taking care of them will entail both looking after them as a medic and also defending them from their enemies." It really ought to be illegal to be able to level such a piercing stare from behind a half-mask and a hitai-ite over one eye. "This is the sort of lecture that I would give one of the boys before teaching them some fancy killing jutsu, but it's easy to forget that a plain kunai can kill someone just as dead as a big flashy technique. Fighting from under a shroud of illusion can give you a crucial advantage, but it's not one that will hold up for long. Until you're much better at genjutsu, like jounin level better, your enemies will be able to break them as soon as they know they're under one. So you have to attack from under the shroud, and you have to put them down with the first blow. For you...that probably means killing them. Without warning, without a sign, without giving them a chance to surrender. So the first thing you have to learn, when you're working with these sorts of techniques, is how to do that."

She shuddered involuntarily, as she had shuddered then. The idea of killing some stranger in cold blood was horrifying, and she didn't know if she could do it even in her own defense. But for Sasuke...she might. As he had warded her when the mysterious Kusa-nin had rampaged, let her ward him now.

The footsteps receded, and she let out a breath of relief.

Her relief was short-lived, however, as another set of footsteps approached from a different direction. These were moving more quickly, a frantic undertone to their pace. They passed by high and to one side, and Sakura almost breathed again, but then they turned and came back again, as if quartering the area.

Then her nightmare happened: the footsteps stopped momentarily, low and perhaps a hundred feet away on a branch, then started again, coming directly toward her at high speed. Sakura stood, gripping a kunai, and waited for the other competitor to become visible. She prayed that they would not notice the genjutsu, that they would fall for the illusion of an empty and cave-free clearing and simply pass on.

Her hopes were dashed. The enemy ran straight through the boundary of the illusion, ignoring it. She—yes, it was a she—came straight for the cave at a flat run. Sakura held her breath as the unknown shinobi approached the trigger to one of her traps, but she avoided it by inches, so closely that Sakura could not be sure if it was intentional or accidental, and continued her approach.

Sakura's hand tightened on the knife she held, her mind frantic with worry, as the unknown kunoichi landed in front of her. Then, as she paused for a moment, Sakura recognized her, and the situation suddenly reoriented itself entirely. It was Hyuuga Hinata.

Hinata's eyes were ridged with the bulging veins that signified her kekkei genkai, so Sakura knew for a fact that she could see her even though she was within the area of her blanket illusion. Nonetheless she ignored her completely and only dodged around her, dropping to her knees beside Naruto with a frantic cry of "Naruto-kun!"

Sakura, breathing deeply to slow her heart, walked back into the cave just in time to become the target of Hinata's anguished gaze. "What happened to him?" she demanded, her voice just on the edge of breaking.

"We were attacked," said Sakura tiredly. "Just one person, and she went straight through us, even when both of them pulled out...some stuff I'm pretty sure no one under jounin could beat. Best I can figure is she was a plant of some sort. She was after Sasuke for some reason, and when Naruto...went nuts...he was a problem for her for a little bit, but then she used something or other on him that just put him down straight away. As far as I can tell from looking he got all those injuries at once. And then she did...something...to Sasuke, which I can't figure out, but he's not in good shape either."

Hinata nodded slowly. She turned back to Naruto with a desperate look. "I can't help him...I don't know any medical ninjutsu...why do I have to be so WORTHLESS!" she screamed, fingers scraping at the ground in frustration. Sakura bit her lip and stepped forward, placing one hand on the distraught girl's shoulder.

"Hinata...it's all right. He's got...he can heal up from things really fast. I wouldn't be surprised if he's just fine by this time tomorrow."

Hinata looked at her with surprise. "By tomorrow? Really?"

Sakura nodded. "When it happened, at like noon today, he was all covered with these horrible bruises. Those are just gone by now. I should think he'll be fine."

Hinata nodded again, slowly. She turned to Sakura again. "That genjutsu you had up...and the traps. I suppose those were in case someone came and attacked you?"

Sakura nodded, but before she could pursue the conversation further she heard more sounds from outside.

"Hinata-san?" That was a call, in a voice she vaguely recognized: it was Aburame Shino. Hinata looked up, her mind visibly changing gears.

She stood, and came to the cave entrance. "Y-yes, Shino-kun, Kiba-kun."

Shino glanced between her and Sakura. "Ah. I presume the reason for your sudden disappearance involves Uzumaki Naruto?"

Hinata nodded, blushing. "He is...badly injured. I saw, and...." She shrugged. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

Shino nodded in return. "It was rather perplexing, before we were able to determine that this area was under a genjutsu. No harm has been done." He looked at Sakura, who was staring at him and Kiba nervously. She was pretty sure Team 8 wouldn't _kill_ them, but she wouldn't be surprised if they demanded their scroll; it was a competition, after all, and with Sasuke and Naruto out of action there was no way Sakura could stand up to them. "Haruno-san, I propose that for the present we act as Konoha shinobi foremost, and leave the matter of scrolls to itself."

Kiba turned to him, frowning. "Should we do that, Shino? We're in competition here."

Shino nodded. "I believe it is prudent, Kiba-san. Not only would acting otherwise invite a risk of mutiny from Hinata-san"—Hinata blushed and looked down—"but I believe that any threat which is capable of putting both Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto out of action has already progressed beyond the usual bounds of competition in this exam."

Kiba glanced at him sideways. "You think they're that strong? Sasuke maybe, but Naruto?"

Shino looked back at Kiba unreadably. "My kikai find him disconcerting." He did not say any more than that.

Kiba shrugged. "Well, okay. Wouldn't feel right anyway, taking their scroll when they've both already been taken down. If I was going to beat them in the Exam I'd like to, you know, actually beat them."

Sakura sighed in relief and nodded. "So...what happened is we were attacked by...someone scary strong. I'm pretty sure they were a plant, they had to be jounin level or more. She was after Sasuke for some reason, and Naruto...got in the way, so she knocked him out with something really nasty, and then did...something to Sasuke that I can't figure out but doesn't seem to be good for him. They're both unconscious here."

Shino nodded. "Very well." He glanced back and forth between Kiba and Hinata. "Do either of you have suggestions?"

Hinata stepped forward with a fierce look on her face. "We are staying here."

Shino turned to look at her, and spoke with a dry undertone. "I believe either of us could have anticipated that reaction, Hinata-san."

Kiba grinned. "I'm fine with it. Let her stay with her boyfriend."

Hinata immediately turned bright red and began stammering; Sakura chuckled inwardly.

* * *

Naruto woke up slowly, which was not his usual mode of waking up. His eyes were closed at first, and the only thing he was aware of was persistent and unpleasant pain in his arm and his ribs. He frowned mentally, wondering what might have precipitated that, and began trying to sort through his memories for what seemed most recent. After a moment of this, he panicked, his eyes flew open, and he attempted to jump to his feet. This endeavor was preempted by a truly blinding burst of pain in the arm he used to lever himself up; he collapsed back, this time aggravating his ribs, and let out a sound halfway between a growl and a groan.

Lying on his back, he glanced around the limited field of view he could attain without moving his neck. He seemed to be under some sort of roof made of wood, and as sensory impressions filtered in, it became clear that he was lying on the ground. Gritting his teeth, he turned his head, sending another wave of pain through his shoulder and arm, but the question of what was around had attained a sudden urgency; obviously he had been unconscious, and who knew what that meant the impossible enemy had done.

Visible was an arc of brighter illumination, which after a moment resolved itself into the entrance to a cave, formed by the curve of a root. Outside, he could see people moving around, but the view was quickly occluded by a figure moving toward him at speed. He had not yet had the chance to become alarmed at this before it skidded to a halt and dropped to a kneeling position directly in front of him. He saw a familiar tan jacket, looked up to see hair of black shading into blue over pale skin.

"Hinata...chan?" he said weakly, half-convinced he was dreaming. What would she be doing here, wherever that was?

Her voice was distraught. "Naruto-kun! Are you all right? How are you feeling?"

That was wrong. She shouldn't sound like that. "I'll...survive," he said, with effort. "How...long?"

Hinata glanced out the cave entrance. "It's about sunset, on the same day you were attacked," she said anxiously. "Are you in pain? Sakura-san said you had a broken arm and some broken ribs..."

"Hurts...a bit. I'll survive...." It seemed as if Sakura had come out all right... "Sasuke?"

He heard the hesitation in her voice. "He's...alive. You shouldn't worry about things right now...you're badly hurt. Just relax."

Naruto clenched his fist. "Sasuke...what happened to him?"

"We...we don't know. He's unconscious. But it looks like he'll survive."

Naruto let out a sharp breath. " _Damn_ it...I lost...."

Her voice was raw with worry and pain. "Naruto-kun..."

That was wrong. His left arm could not move; he lifted his right and reached over himself, ignoring the pain in his ribs to pat her knee. "'Salright ...Hinata-chan...."

He was tired, it was getting harder to think, but as he fell asleep again he felt her hand hesitantly cover his own.

* * *

When Naruto woke again, it was brighter than it had been; the sun shone on the clearing outside, and a patch of sunlight reached in through the cave mouth to almost touch his legs. He shifted, and a twinge shot through his ribs, but it was nowhere near the debilitating pain he had felt when he woke so briefly...the day before? Yes, it must have been—the sun had already set then, and now it was shining bright.

He tried moving his left arm, and winced; there was still quite some pain there, to be certain. It was not, luckily, nearly as bad as it had been. Pushing through the pain, he tried to bend his arm; it succeeded well enough, but he was not going to be fighting anything in particular with those injuries. He gritted his teeth.

Using his uninjured right arm, he pushed himself up to a sitting position; his ribs protested, but he ignored them. Glancing around, he took stock of the area. Sasuke lay nearby, also within the cave, unconscious, but his face tight with some strong emotion. Naruto frowned—he didn't think he'd ever seen Sasuke look that emotional about something even when conscious. He was also lying on a standard-issue sleeping mat, and Naruto noticed with a look down that sometime while he was asleep someone had put one under him as well. Sakura lay next to Sasuke, on another sleeping mat, and her arm reached out towards him in her sleep. _No surprise there, I suppose...I wonder what Sasuke would think of it?_

His legs seemed to be uninjured, and he tried to lean forward and stand, but his ribs emphatically objected, and with a muttered oath he decided not to be quite so adventurous just yet. Settling back into a more comfortable seated position, he muttered balefully to himself. He knew from the Hokage's word that ordinary people took much longer to heal than he did, but at the moment he couldn't help but make comparisons to the impossibly, surreally fast healing that the fox's shroud gave him, which inevitably came up wanting. _I wonder...could I activate it now, just to get healed up?_ But, remembering the anger that had driven him against their enemy, he shuddered and discarded the idea. As a weapon in combat it was...useful, but using such a volatile power when surrounded by only friends was reckless.

As a compromise, he reached into the seal and pulled out a decent portion of boost, noticing only then that he could still see the lines. He grimaced momentarily, but let it be as the strange fiery shock of the boost passed through him. Suddenly it was very hard to sit still, which didn't mesh particularly well with his injuries; he sighed and remained seated.

There was movement outside, and he saw a figure in a coat walking across the clearing towards the cave. At first he thought it was Hinata, but after a moment he noticed its height and glasses; it was Shino, her teammate.

"Ah, Shino-san..." he called, hesitantly. The tall boy turned to look at him.

"Uzumaki-san. You are awake."

Naruto frowned, perplexed. "Uh, yeah, I am."

Shino nodded. "Are your teammates still asleep?"

Naruto nodded in return. "Yeah...Sasuke looks like he's in some weird sort of coma, not just asleep. But yeah. Is your whole team here? I thought I saw Hinata-chan yesterday."

"We are all present. Hinata-san saw your injuries from afar and insisted that we remain. It seemed reasonable, since you were injured by a force outside the protocols of the examination."

Naruto frowned. "She did? Why would she do that? You guys shouldn't be slowing yourselves down to take care of us. You might lose your chance."

Shino's eyebrows showed above his glasses. "You do not know?"

Naruto scowled. "Know _what_? I wouldn't have asked you if I knew."

Shino stared at him for several seconds before shaking his head. "Then that is not my place to say. Suffice it that Hinata-san insisted that we remain, and neither Kiba-san nor I objected."

Naruto shrugged. "All right. Thanks, I guess. Uh, has anything happened?"

"Are you yet able to stand?"

Naruto winced and shook his head.

"Against the moment when you are, you should be aware that Haruno-san has laid a number of both fatal and non-fatal traps around this clearing. You should acquaint yourself with their triggers at the first opportunity. Also..." he seemed to pause for a moment, "we have agreed with Haruno-san that we will not conflict over our scrolls for the duration of the exam. Will you abide by this agreement?"

Naruto stared at him in indignation. "What? Of course I'm not going to try to take your scroll! I'm not going to sabotage Hinata-chan like that," he muttered.

Shino nodded slowly. "And you do not _know?_ " he muttered, almost to himself. Naruto snorted in annoyance but did not respond otherwise.

Naruto's ribs and arm itched, in a distinctive feeling that told of the fox knitting bones. He grumbled and sat back against the root behind him, resigning himself to a long and boring wait.

Shino had walked back across the clearing and stationed himself on a branch; Naruto could just make out his position from where he sat. He seemed perfectly content to simply wait and watch. Naruto surmised that he had been assigned the dawn watch of a schedule.

It had been a good half hour after this, and Naruto was on the verge of falling asleep again of sheer boredom, when he heard a rustling from outside the cave, beyond his field of view, and after a moment Hinata walked past the cave mouth.

She disappeared before he could call, but after only a few moments came back into view. He waved his right arm and called her name, and she spun towards him with sudden energy and rushed over.

"Naruto-kun! You're awake! Are you all right?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah...can't stand up yet, but it's healing. I'm just bored out of my mind because I can't move."

Hinata stifled a giggle. "Everyone is still asleep, Naruto-kun. I think it will be more interesting once they start waking up."

Naruto sighed. "Yeah, probably...It'll still be boring not being able to _move_ , though." He was silent for a moment, then looked at Hinata. "How did your team show up here?"

Hinata looked down, her face turning pink. "Ah...I saw, earlier, when you did some things that let off a big chakra flare, so we were in the area...and I saw that you were hurt. And I couldn't just leave you. I don't think Sakura-san could defend both you and Sasuke-san alone."

Naruto nodded slowly. She had come to help defend him while he was hurt. So she cared about him, at least a little. The debate renewed itself in his head whether or not to simply tell her about the fox. How would she take it?

His introspection was interrupted by a sudden shiver at the corner of his vision as pieces seemed to fall from the cave wall near him, a protruding root-branch shattering. He almost jumped, but instead closed his eyes and winced. Right. The seal had been open since the snake had first attacked him the day before. Just when he had almost gotten to ignore them, even managing to look at Hinata.

He heard a soft gasp, and Hinata's voice. "Naruto-kun! Are you all right?"

Naruto forced a smile and opened his eyes momentarily. "Yeah, just my ribs. Sorry."

She nodded slowly, worriedly. Naruto closed his eyes again, cursing inside. He couldn't even close the seal, because without boosting he wouldn't be healed until the next day. Damned fox...but then, without it he probably wouldn't have survived whatever the grotesque snake-thing had done to him.

Her voice startled him, making him aware of how deeply he had fallen into his reverie. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

He opened his eyes again in surprise, and met hers. Her expression was full of concern, but the effect was ruined by the black lines tracing across her face.

"No, I don't think so," he said, sighing. "I just need to sit and heal. Should be...I don't know, another few hours or so before I'm ready to go." He looked at Sasuke, still in whatever state the enemy from yesterday had put him into. "I don't know about Sasuke, though. I...Damn it, I lost. And that _thing_ got at him. What did it _do?_ "

Hinata sighed. "I have looked at him...there's a seal on his neck that's releasing some odd sort of chakra into his system. I don't know what it might be, but you probably want to have your sensei look at it when you get out of here."

Naruto nodded. "I guess...this is just so _random_. Someone insanely strong decided to infiltrate the test just to put Sasuke in a coma? Why? What does it have against Sasuke? For that matter, why didn't it just kill him?"

Hinata shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I didn't see the person you fought...but I'm glad you're all safe."

Naruto nodded, pensive. After several moments, Hinata got up and returned to whatever errand she had been on.

As the morning passed, the others in the makeshift camp, Sasuke aside, began waking and moving about. Naruto sat, fidgeting under the boost, trying not to annoy the others too much by complaining. Periodic checks of his arm and ribs found them healing up perceptibly, but standing was still too great a strain. His arm was sore, but could move normally, and the soreness was diminishing. _Every time I think I can just damn the fox without a thought and then I pull something like this and I need it._

Kiba woke nearly an hour after Hinata had; in response to a subtly dry comment from Shino, he defended that he wanted to take advantage of the ability to sleep in in the absence of his mother and his sister. It was five minutes after that that he entered the cave. Seeing Naruto, he grinned.

"There's the guy who was going to beat up everyone he came across?"

Naruto glared at him. "Shut up, dog-boy. The guy was like jounin-level at least. I'm not sure Kakashi could have beat me with...what I used. And he hurt Sasuke real bad."

Kiba looked at him with surprise and disbelief. "Beat your sensei? Yeah, right. Kurenai-sensei is a genjutsu type, and she still beats the crap out of me and Akamaru even with all our stuff. Isn't Kakashi like some sort of legend? Haven't you tried it against him?"

Naruto gave him a glower. "No, Kiba, I haven't tried it against him, because when I use it I kill people. I don't know if Kakashi could beat it. Probably. But I'm not going to try, just in case."

Kiba's face went serious. "Really. All right...." He hesitated. "I...I'm sorry that Sasuke got hurt. You too, but it doesn't seem to be bugging you too bad."

Naruto shrugged. "Just another few hours."

Kiba nodded and, awkwardly, withdrew.

It was about another hour later when they were attacked.

* * *

Kiba was pacing in circles around the edge of the clearing. Normally, when shinobi made a camp, they were either eating, sleeping, or doing something necessary to the process of eating or sleeping; they tended to make camp late and break it early. Simply sitting around at camp without anything else to do was a novelty.

The attack came by surprise. One moment, Kiba was walking along without any particular care; the next, his head came up in surprise, and a moment after that an unknown assailant had rushed out of the trees and led with a vicious punch to his stomach.

Kiba staggered back, his face morphing from surprise to pain to anger, regained his balance, and lunged at the enemy. His first punch was dodged, but the second connected, and the enemy's single visible eye widened. His next move was hurried; he thrust his arm forward in a strangely awkward punch at Kiba's face. Kiba dodged it easily, but a moment later he stiffened and dropped to his knees, retching. His enemy—dressed in gray, bandages over his face, his headband engraved with a musical note—stood over him for a moment, contemptuous, then smashed him with a hard hook punch that laid him out on his side, still fighting the effects of whatever had put him down.

The camp had quickly begun to move. Naruto made as if to jump to his feet, but his ribs erupted in pain at the ill-considered motion, and he dropped back to the ground with a yell. Sakura, a kunai between her teeth, was flashing through seals, and Hinata's eyes had flared into the Byakugan as soon as Kiba had moved. She rushed forward, dodging around the Oto-nin's frantic punch, and hit him open-palmed in the chest. He flew backward several feet, belying the apparent lack of force behind the blow, and landed on his back with a crash, gasping.

She was about to press her advantage when a voice sounded from one side. "Zankuuha!" A blast of wind, visible as a tremor in the air, caught her in the side, and she was thrown across the clearing, landing hard at the foot of a tree. Another shinobi in a Sound hitai-ite walked forward, reaching down a hand to help the bandaged one up. He was grinning rather smugly.

"So how did your cunning plan to take all of them down by yourself with your awesome sound arm go?"

"Shut up, Zaku," came the raspy voice of the other. He turned to Hinata, who was lying some twenty feet away, moving weakly. "Bitch. Must be a Hyuuga—that really hurt. Lucky she went down quick."

Naruto snarled and began to struggle back to a sitting position, gritting his teeth through the pain. His determination was interrupted by the sight of the bandaged enemy turning suddenly, for no apparent reason, and hooking his arm out in a threatening gesture at...nothing, apparently. It had had some effect, though, because Shino, who had been standing across the clearing doing nothing visible, suddenly doubled over and began coughing. The Oto-nin addressed him dispassionately.

"Aburame clan. We had our briefings. Your insects are vulnerable to a certain set of frequencies which will, with luck, crack their exoskeletons and kill them en masse. Looks like I found one. If you stay out of this you won't get hurt. Our orders from Orochimaru-sama are only to kill Uchiha Sasuke. Other targets are not...targeted."

Shino did not reply, but charged with deceptive speed for someone in apparent physical distress. Zaku, who had been watching Hinata and Kiba, did not turn in time; he took a hard elbow in the back, and collapsed with a yell, Shino on top of him. He had time to hit him several times hammer-fist in the back of the head before the bandaged teammate threw him off with a kick. Shino landed on his side and immediately began to stand; the Oto-nin stepped over his teammate and shoved the gauntlet on his arm into his face. Shino convulsed and fell back.

The other Oto-nin, Zaku, was slowly pushing himself up off the ground. His face was smeared with grass and dirt, and as he got his knees under him, he clutched his head with a growl. His face was ugly with rage.

"Leaf bastards don't know when to quit." He slowly began to walk over to the cave, towards Sasuke, his bandaged teammate following him. Then they were interrupted again.

"Tsuuga!" That was Kiba's voice, and he attacked from behind, looking like a huge drill spinning too fast to see as he struck the bandaged Oto-nin in the back. His target was thrown forwards, the drill following him, driving him, until he smashed into the ground and Kiba came out of his attack and landed atop him. He straightened up slowly, shaking his head as if uncertain of his balance, and glanced down at his enemy, who remained prone on the ground, unmoving.

Zaku had reacted first with shock, then disbelief, then greater rage. His voice was more of a snarl as he shouted, one arm extended toward Kiba. "Zankuuha!"

Kiba had time only to turn, alarm in his face, before the wind struck him, and he flew backwards to land on the ground. Zaku barely had time to grin in satisfaction, though, before Akamaru flew through the air towards him and latched onto his extended arm, clamping down with his teeth.

Zaku yelled in sudden pain and flailed his arm around, but Akamaru held on. It took a quick hard punch to the dog's stomach before his jaws relaxed in shock and he flew off. Zaku spun around and leveled his other arm at the spot where Akamaru had landed.

"Zankuuha!" The attack caught Akamaru full-on and sent him flying, disappearing between two trees.

"You utter bastards! I'm almost thinking—"

Zaku's rant was interrupted by a voice from behind him. "Hakke kuushou!" A wave of force caught him in the back, sending him stumbling forward to fall on his face. He rose again more slowly, and there was murder in his face as he turned toward Hinata, who was panting heavily, one palm extended toward him.

"ENOUGH! I'm just going to wipe you all off the face of the planet! You first, Hyuuga!"

Naruto threw himself upward, his ribs in shattering pain again, but he did not care, he was charging toward Zaku, but he wouldn't be fast enough—Zaku had both hands outstretched toward Hinata, whose eyes widened, unable to move—

"ZANKUUKYOKUHA!"

_—Kyuubi—_

The shroud formed instantly, and Naruto's speed was multiplied; there was only a red blur as he slammed into Zaku just as the attack was released. The collision spun Zaku around, and Naruto took one hand of it full-on. But he already had a grip on Zaku's wrist, the red chakra that bubbled around his hand burning the enemy horribly, and the deadly wind collided with him, buffeted him about, cut him even through the shroud, but did not throw him away. Zaku's other hand had been pointed straight up, and the wind cut a swatch of destruction through the branches but did no one else any harm. Then he was on his back, on the ground, ten feet away, and Naruto was on top of him, the fox's instincts dominant— _KILL. HIM._ Red claws raked across Zaku's flesh, shredding it.

It took only moments for the fox to be satisfied. He leapt off of Zaku, or what was left of him, and spun around, looking for any other threat. The bandaged Oto-nin did not register; he was still lying face-down nearer the cave, not moving. No one else was standing except—

Hinata stared at him, eyes wide, the veins around them standing out, her body frozen. Naruto spun to face her, crouched down as if on all fours, and froze, caught between his instincts and the fox's. The shroud around him turned chaotic as he fought with himself, his eyes locked on her face. The moment seemed to stretch endlessly until she spoke—

"N-Naruto-kun?"

—and took a step towards him.

He dodged backwards and snarled menacingly, and she froze. Then, with a convulsive effort, Naruto forced the fox's chakra down. The shroud vanished, the invincible power and strength left him, and he was suddenly tired, too tired to move, too tired to stand. The last thing he saw was Hinata's eyes filling with concern as he collapsed.

* * *

He woke slowly, for the second time in as many days. He was lying on his back, this time out in the middle of the clearing. It took him a moment to sort out his memories, and when he did he sagged in despair, as much as one could while lying supine already.

It was ruined. He had shown her, he had brutally killed someone in front of her, he had even been aggressive toward her. Whatever she had felt about him before, there was no way it would survive this.

Glancing around, he checked his surroundings. There was movement to one side, where he saw Shino standing up, and Sakura kneeling over someone—probably Kiba, he had looked the worst after the fight was over. To his other side...he looked over.

Hinata knelt a few feet away, focused on him, her hands on her knees. Naruto quickly closed his eyes and turned his head away. He didn't think he could stand to see the same look on her face as on all the others'.

Her voice came to him, hesitant and soft. "Ah...Naruto-kun?"

She didn't seem to be angry at him. She must still be unsure what had happened. He had to tell her. After this...it would be the utmost wrong to still conceal what he held.

He tried to sit up, and found that there was no longer any pain in his chest or arm, but instead a bone-deep tiredness. He pushed through it as best he could, slowly rising to a seated position. He looked around, trying to postpone the conversation as much as he could. Sakura, distracted from Kiba on the ground in front of her, rose and hurried over to him.

"Naruto! Are you all right?"

He nodded numbly. It was true, he didn't seem to have any physical hurts, and his fatigue would go away with time. A question niggled at his mind.

"Sakura? Where were you? I didn't see you...during the fight."

She seemed to shrink, a new weight dogging her movements, and pointed to a spot in the clearing. A figure lay there, with long black hair and gray patterned pants like those of the other two Oto genin, a wide, red gash in her stomach no longer bleeding, deathly still.

"Under...genjutsu. I tried to set up a genjutsu to help me during the fight...she broke it and came after me. She was a genjutsu type too...she broke my genjutsu and I broke hers. It came down to fighting with knives. I...guess I was better at it."

Naruto sat, taking it in without really hearing. Slowly, he nodded.

"Well...I'm glad you were and not her."

Sakura nodded, but her face was clouded.

A voice spoke up from beside him, a voice which ordinarily he sought out but now he did not want to hear. "N-Naruto-kun? Ah...."

He turned to look at her, meeting her eyes with difficulty. There was nothing but concern there now, and it was an utmost wrench to begin the words that he knew would wipe it away.

"How long was I out?"

"Ah...only about ten minutes...."

He nodded again, slowly. "You...saw what happened."

She nodded timidly. Naruto forged onward, resigned.

"What you saw...what I did...well, what you have to know is that when the Yondaime...beat the Kyuubi thirteen years ago...he didn't kill it, like the Academy said. You can't kill a demon. What he did...was seal it away."

Her mouth was open in surprise, and her eyes questioning. Naruto closed his eyes, turned his face away, and spoke to the ground.

"He sealed it...in me. Inside me. What I did there...was I pulled out some of its power. I wasn't fast enough to get that guy otherwise. I...I'm sorry I didn't, didn't tell you already, but...everyone else hates me for it. All the civilians...I just wanted...I wanted to have a friend...I'm sorry...."

He stopped talking, his throat going tight. His eyes were still closed, and he did not want to open them. For as long as they weren't open, he could pretend that she did not have that look in her eyes.

He heard movement, a rustling, and knew she was standing, walking away. He kept his eyes closed, knowing that it was a mercy, that he wouldn't need to see her face. Just the back of her head, turned away. It was better than he had expected...the movement was getting closer. What? What was she doing?

Arms wrapped around him, and something pressed against his chest. It was such an unexpected response that his eyes popped open. She was kneeling beside him, hugging him, her head pressed against the side of his chest. _What? What is...?_

"Hinata?" he asked, confused, wondering. A new hope had bloomed in his mind, and contended with a strict pragmatism that warned him not to get his hopes up.

She was breathing hard, unsteadily, as if trying not to cry. "Naruto-kun..."

"Hinata...you shouldn't...I'm...."

She took another deep breath and composed herself. "Naruto-kun...no one should hate you for that. No one who knows you could. You...you should not be afraid."

It took a moment for him to speak again, and his emotions were tangled and confused. "Hinata...you shouldn't stay around me! I'm...I'm dangerous! Look at that guy"—he twisted around in her arms to look, and saw Zaku's corpse a bloody wreck behind her—"what I did to him, and I..."

She shook her head, still pressed against his chest, and tightened her grip. "You saved my life, Naruto-kun. And probably everyone else's, too, once he had gotten rid of me."

"But I...I almost attacked you! The fox almost...." He broke off with a shudder.

She shook her head again, more resolutely. "Naruto-kun...would never attack a friend. I think...I think you would do anything to protect your friends. I hope...you would protect me, too...."

Her voice trailed off, in a familiar fashion—she was unsure of herself. Old instincts reasserted themselves, and Naruto quickly reassured her. "Of course...Hinata-chan. You...I would protect you. From anything." He found himself thinking of Zaku again, in the moment that he tried to kill her, and ground his teeth.

She nodded, and sat quietly for a while, seemingly feeling no inclination to let him go. Naruto had to admit that he was not so eager for that either. It occurred to him to wonder what the others were doing, and he glanced around. Kiba was still unconscious on the ground, while Sakura and Shino were bustling about, pointedly not looking at them.

He hesitated for a moment before wrapping his arm around her shoulders, but she only responded by pulling him tighter to herself. It was some while later when he spoke, hoarsely.

"Thank you...Hinata-chan."

It was an odd setting, surrounded by dead bodies and still smelling vaguely of blood, but for the first time since that morning, Naruto felt himself relax.


	13. Seals

Sasuke woke from a highly disturbing dream, or vision, or something, to a pain in his neck that might have continued uninterrupted from that which he had felt before he was knocked out. Only this time, the pain in his neck fed pain in his shoulder, his arm, all over his face—his eyes snapped open, and he threw himself up to his feet. His skin burned all along the line from his left hand up to his face, and he stared at his hand. Strange markings moved and shifted under the skin, burning with purple fire. Every few seconds, they would slow and stop, fading to black for a moment, before glowing again and moving further. And they were spreading outward, covering more of his body.

A noise disturbed him from his contemplation, and he took note of his surroundings. He was in some sort of cave, the walls of wood. He was standing on a sleeping mat, and there were two others nearby. _Naruto and Sakura, I guess._ The exit of the cave was just in front of him; he ducked slightly stepping out.

There were more people in the clearing than he had expected. Naruto was leaning against a tree across the way, asleep or unconscious. Sakura was kneeling over someone who lay supine on the ground—a second look told him it was Inuzuka Kiba, and his teammate Shino stood off to one side, silent as usual.

As he glanced around again, he saw Sakura look up and him and hurriedly rise. She took several steps toward him, then slowed and abruptly stopped, staring at him with an odd, half-repulsed fascination. He raised an eyebrow and looked down at the marks on his hand, which were plain black, no longer pulsing or moving.

"Don't tell me, they're on my face too?" he said. Sakura nodded mutely, and took several more hesitant steps forward, until she was close enough to touch him. She looked at his neck and winced.

Sasuke became aware of a strange energy humming through him, making him restless, uneasy. He crouched and jumped straight up, landing on a branch above them. Three bounces later, he landed back on the ground, still buzzing. He shook his head. "What happened?"

"Ah...well, that...whatever they were...who attacked us did something to you—there's some sort of seal on your neck that's doing strange things. Those marks are somehow coming out of the seal. How do you feel?"

He shook his head again, convulsively, forcing down the urge to attack things. "It's...weird. I think it's boosted my chakra somehow, but it makes me...strange."

Sakura nodded slowly. "We have to get Kakashi-sensei to look at it once we're out of here. There's no way that person was a genin, so they had to be planted somehow. Who knows what they wanted."

Sasuke nodded at that—it was only common sense—but why did he feel reluctant? He forced his mind back to practicalities. "Why are Kiba and Shino here? Is Hinata somewhere around as well?"

"Well—it's been about a day since you were knocked out. And Naruto got knocked out as well, really nastily, with a bunch of broken bones. So Team Eight just happened to come within range, and Hinata saw Naruto injured and insisted that they would stay and make sure no one attacked us while you two were...out of action." She gave a bit of a grin, and Sasuke returned a knowing smirk. "Anyway, they stayed overnight, and then...earlier this morning, some people did attack us." She became pensive, and spoke more slowly. "They knocked Kiba out, hurt Hinata pretty badly, and Shino says they killed enough of his bugs that he can't really fight anymore. Kiba's dog is missing, and Hinata went out to look for him. Naruto did...something with the Kyuubi, and it made him tired enough that he just fell asleep about an hour ago."

Sasuke's fist had clenched involuntarily. "Who attacked us? Where are they?" His voice was hard.

"Two of them are dead," said Sakura, bleakly. "Naruto killed one, and I the other. The last got hit with some nasty attack of Kiba's, and he's still unconscious. They're over there." She pointed towards a gap in the trees at the edge of the clearing, near where Naruto was asleep. Sasuke walked over, quickly and jerkily, his fists still clenched. The now-quiescent mark itched uneasily.

When he reached them, he was rather shocked. He recognized the three who were lying there—they were the team from Otogakure who had accosted that older Konoha genin before the first exam. The one with the odd gauntlets lay on his face, the subtle motion of his breath marking him as the one still living. A spiral of deep cuts grooved his back, bleeding sluggishly.

The other two were both dead. One of a deep kunai slash all across the stomach, her hair tangled around her face. The other...well, his face was recognizable, but the mess below it was not distinguishable as a human body. It was in at least three separate pieces, each seeming to consist, basically, of shredded meat. His legs were fully detached, and one arm hung by a thread. Sasuke's mouth tightened, and he turned away.

Sakura had followed him, though she stayed well away from the three. He turned to her. "I think I can guess which one which of you got," he said, his voice flat. Sakura nodded timidly, and, seeming uncomfortable, beckoned him back into the clearing proper.

The marks on his face and hands burned again, glowing. This time, they receded, slowly, inch by inch, and as they gave up their grip on his flesh Sasuke felt the strange, antagonistic energy that had filled him weaken. He watched with fascination, the marks itching and his neck burning, as they slowly, almost grudgingly retreated. After some thirty seconds they were no longer visible on his arm or shoulder; at his quick gesture Sakura confirmed that only the original seal that the snake-bastard had put on him remained.

Partway through this process, Naruto, nearby, had begun to stir; as it had finished, his eyes opened, and he looked around, suddenly alert. His eyes fell on Sasuke, and he jumped up.

"Sasuke! Are you all right?"

Sasuke nodded rather impatiently. "I'm perfectly fine, at the moment. Need to see Kakashi once we leave the forest, for this...mark."

Naruto looked him over dubiously for a moment, then nodded. He glanced around again. "Where's Hinata-chan?"

"She went off to look for Akamaru—he went missing somehow during the fight," said Sakura. Naruto glanced around with growing agitation, until his eyes fixed on a gap between two trees, where Hinata was walking slowly back into the clearing, carrying a white bundle. He rushed over to her, and Sasuke saw that she moved painfully, and slightly favored one leg.

His voice carried over the distance between them. "Hinata-chan! Are you all right? You look..." He trailed off. Hinata blushed slightly and spoke, too softly for Sasuke to hear. Sakura rolled her eyes, muttering, and set off towards them, and Sasuke followed.

Sakura began handling Naruto as soon as she was in easy earshot, her tone halfway between chastisement and reassurance. "Naruto, she's not badly hurt, she's just got a few bruised ribs. Smothering her is not going to help." Naruto looked mildly horrified and took a few hurried steps back, stammering apologies; Hinata giggled quietly and assured him that it was all right. Meanwhile, Sakura was looking at the bundle in Hinata's arms, which had animated itself and begun to whine.

"Hinata, how is he?" she asked, frowning.

Hinata looked down at him, looking worried. "He's trying to be brave, but...it hurts him to move. I think he might have...broken ribs, or something? I don't know...we'd have to ask Kiba, once he wakes up."

Sakura nodded and carefully took the dog from Hinata, who held him out with scrupulous care. Sasuke followed her as she walked over to Kiba to lay him down nearby, leaving Naruto to fret about Hinata's injuries. The dog crawled the few inches to Kiba's face and began licking him; Sasuke smirked and turned to Sakura.

"What have we thought about what to do next? I presume you were mostly waiting on me and Naruto to wake up?"

Sakura nodded. "That was true, until we got attacked. Now...I don't know. Team Eight are pretty badly damaged. We're fine, but...." She trailed off, the dilemma implicit.

Sasuke nodded slowly. "It has to be said...but this is a competition. It may or may not be worth slowing ourselves down to take care of them."

"Hey!" That was Naruto, who had assisted Hinata over to the place of the impromptu gathering. "They did it for us! There's no way we don't help them out!"

Sasuke glanced at him. "Dobe, we've already lost a day because of that snake guy. We've got—what, three days left? Four? We still need to get our scroll."

Naruto glowered back at him, until Sakura interrupted them. "Ah—the Sound leader, the one who's still alive, he was carrying this." She held up a scroll, marked with the sign of Heaven. "This is the one we need. It takes some of the time pressure off, anyway."

Sasuke's neck itched, and he rubbed it. "Then it would serve us best to get to the tower as fast as we can. I wouldn't be surprised if some people set up ambushes near there to try to get people with both their scrolls, and it'll only get worse as the test goes on."

Naruto frowned. "Well, we can still help them. Uh, Hinata-chan? What scroll did you guys get at the start?"

Hinata fidgeted. "Ah...I don't know if I should..."

"I believe attempting to maintain secrecy at this time is purposeless." Sasuke jumped at Shino's voice; he had come up behind him and to one side, quietly enough that he had not noticed. "Why? If we should pass this exam at all from this point, it will be through the assistance of Team Seven. Though my mobility is unhindered, my combat ability is now limited to simple taijutsu. Hinata-san is unable to move quickly or fight effectively, and even if Kiba-san is uninjured when he wakes he will be unable to fight at full capacity while needing to protect Akamaru. Therefore I will answer your question, Uzumaki-san. We received the Heaven scroll. As such, this item is not useful to us." He indicated the scroll in Sakura's hand.

Naruto closed his mouth after a moment to digest that, and recovered. "All right! So we just need to help them get to the tower and then find some team there to grab another Earth scroll from! Easy!"

Sasuke shook his head. "I don't like it. It's a chance we don't need to take. What if whoever we find is as good as those Sound guys? We don't need another round of serious injuries."

Naruto scowled. "Sasuke, we got hurt against the Sound guys because they had complete surprise and both of us were down and out until I pulled out the fox. What do you want to bet if we were the ones attacking them now that we couldn't take them all out in less than a minute?"

Sasuke shrugged.

"Besides," Naruto went on, "they probably saved our lives being here. If they hadn't...it would have been just Sakura unless I managed to pull out the fox pretty darned quick. Who knows if it would have worked? And if we just leave them they might not even be able to make it to the tower at all, depending on how Kiba is. Not gonna happen." He stared challengingly at Sasuke.

Sasuke snorted. "Wow, you feel strongly about this, don't you. If you want, dobe. I guess I'll get a chance to fight someone this round after all."

Naruto grinned. "Cool! So let's go!"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Well, aren't you in a hurry today." He glanced around the circle. "Thoughts?"

"It would be advisable to delay our departure until Kiba-san is again conscious," said Shino. "If he is able to move on his own, it would greatly decrease the inconvenience and danger associated with travel through this forest."

Naruto nodded, his enthusiasm momentarily damped. "Sakura? You've been doing that medicine stuff—do you know what might be wrong with Kiba?"

Sakura shrugged. "There's nothing that I can see while he's unconscious. If he hit his head...that might explain it, and I couldn't tell until he woke up."

It was at this point, conveniently enough, Sasuke thought, that the object of discussion groaned and shifted. Akamaru, lying by his head, barked weakly, and Kiba's hand came up towards him as if by instinct. Then he winced, and his eyes opened.

"Aaah...ow. What happened?"

Hinata moved up to kneel in front of him. "Ah...Kiba-kun, you got hit by one of those shinobi's attacks. It knocked you out."

Kiba moved again and groaned more loudly. His hand came up to rub his forehead. "My _head_...last thing I remember is hitting that bastard with the sound arms with Tsuuga. Did I get him?"

Hinata nodded. "Yes. He's still unconscious. The other two...are dead."

Shino moved forward and stood near Kiba's feet. "Kiba-san. We have decided that we will move out in company with Team Seven as soon as you are able to travel. How soon do you believe this will occur?"

Kiba frowned. "In company? Why? We don't need the help!" He tried to sit up, and winced, grabbing his head again. "Okay...I do, right now, but I'll be fine in just a few minutes!"

Shino shook his head. "Hinata-san and myself are both injured and very limited in our ability to fight. It is prudent to accept help."

Kiba sighed. "All right...where's Akamaru?" The dog, near his head, whined, and Kiba turned to his side to look at him. "Akamaru? How you doing, boy?"

The dog barked once and whined piteously, and Kiba looked up with thunder in his face. "Hey. Any of you know what's wrong with him? He just says it hurts to move."

Sakura shrugged. "I don't really know, Kiba-san...but I think he might have a broken rib. He got hit by the same thing you did."

Kiba's face twisted in anger. "That bastard! Where is he? I'll kill him!"

"He is already dead, Kiba-san." Shino's voice was flatter than usual.

Kiba sagged and glanced around, ill at ease. "Ah...okay. Um...who got him?"

Naruto raised a hand, looking bleak.

Kiba stared at him, his face moving through incredulity to guarded respect. "Oh...Well, thanks, Naruto. Akamaru...anyone who hurt him...." His hand clenched in a fist.

Naruto blew a breath out through clenched teeth. "Yeah...."

After a moment's uncomfortable silence, Kiba tried to sit up again. Though he winced, this time he managed it. "Right...now I just have to master standing, and we'll be good to go."

Sasuke snorted.

* * *

Sasuke landed on a branch, turning half back to locate the others in the group. Shino was just behind him, and landed next to him as he turned. Just behind that was Naruto, who had insisted on carrying Hinata while she was unable to run or jump. It did make sense, Sasuke admitted; if you were going to pick one of the still-ambulatory genin to carry another at speed for hours on end, it would be Naruto.

_And Hinata certainly doesn't seem to mind...._

Sasuke took off again as Kiba and Sakura, at the rear, landed on the same branch, and the entire progression continued toward the tower.

It was a few minutes later when Naruto—or, presumably, a clone of Naruto made for the purpose, since Naruto himself still had both hands occupied holding Hinata—grabbed Sasuke's arm as he was about to continue in the same direction. The original Naruto landed just beside Shino a moment later, and Sasuke waited on the branch as the rest of the group gathered.

Naruto's clone disappeared as Sakura landed on the branch, and he himself carefully let Hinata down on her feet.

"So one of my clones out that way just dispelled telling me that it found a team," he said, indicating a direction perhaps half perpendicular to their course. "Couple of Iwa-nin. Don't know what scrolls they have or anything, but they're headed for the tower, so it could be that they've got both. A few more clones are tracking them."

Sasuke glanced in the direction indicated, but all that was visible were more trees. "Well, I'm all for getting this over with." He glanced up at the sun, which was beginning to trend ominously towards the horizon to the west.

Naruto nodded. "Would be nice to get out of here today...I think we must have gotten lucky last night or something, if nothing came after us except those Sound guys." He looked over at the others. "What do you think?"

Shino shrugged. "The majority of the fighting will necessarily be done by your team. Therefore, our input is of limited relevance."

Naruto frowned. "Doesn't mean you can't help think about it."

"We have no more information about the situation than you do, Naruto-san. In fact, you are our only source of information regarding these prospective targets. Do you believe that you are capable of subduing them?"

Naruto nodded. "Sure. Especially with surprise. Could probably do it on my own, with Sasuke and Sakura to back me up no problem at all."

Shino inclined his head. "Then I have no objection to the idea of accosting them."

Naruto glanced around. "Anyone else have thoughts?" No one did, apparently. "Right! Let's get going!" He gathered up Hinata again and glanced at Sasuke, who shot him an amused look and took off in the direction he had indicated. Naruto followed closely, and the rest came behind.

* * *

It was after a kilometer or so of running, during the course of which Naruto made several small course corrections as information from his clones came in, that he stopped on a branch just ahead of Sasuke. Sasuke landed beside him and waited, and Naruto looked over at him.

"Hinata sees them," he whispered. Sasuke glanced at her; her eyes were surrounded by a network of bulging veins. He nodded fractionally and replied with equal quiet.

"Where?"

Naruto, unable to point, glanced significantly in a certain direction—on the ground, ahead and slightly to the right. Sasuke turned as the rest of the party began to land on the branch, and he gestured them silent.

Naruto carefully put Hinata down, and she dropped into a crouch, staring ahead. "They're coming this way...." she whispered, and pointed, her arm slowly tracing the other team's path. Naruto nodded and darted along the branch towards them, then came back.

"I can see them," he said quietly. "I'm going to try to grab them with Kawarimi. Sasuke, Sakura, can you come back me up?"

Sasuke followed him back along the branch, Sakura behind him. Soon enough, they came to a place where the team was visible, slowly traversing a gap in the trees. They were walking on the ground, and Sasuke laughed softly on seeing them; all three were glancing around nervously, and as they moved one was shivering violently every time he brushed against any sort of foliage.

"Poor bastards," said Naruto, almost reverently. "They ran across some of the plants...."

Sasuke nodded. "You going to do something?"

Naruto nodded back, took several steps along the branch, crossed his hands. With a look of concentration, he molded chakra; Sasuke glanced at him, his eyes active, and saw enough moving to fill the forest with clones. He frowned momentarily, but before he could object Naruto released the technique. To Sasuke's surprise, only three clones appeared in front of him.

"How much chakra did you put into those?" he asked in a hiss. Naruto grinned.

"A lot. They have to have enough to overwhelm those guys' resistance to a Kawarimi, and a normal clone doesn't. One sec."

He crossed his hands again, and three small clusters of clones appeared, these ones formed from saner amounts of chakra. Each gathered tightly around one of the enhanced ones, and at a signal from Naruto each enhanced clone formed a ram seal and put far more chakra into a kawarimi than one should ever require. With a semi-loud popping noise, they each disappeared, and in their places appeared three paranoid and surprised Iwa-nin.

Naruto's clones quickly jumped on them and bore them to the ground. Sasuke watched, his expectations of having to actually do anything rapidly disappearing, as each enemy was semi-methodically (it was Naruto, after all) pinned by all four limbs, the clones grabbing and stripping away weapons pouches from their belts.

Then, suddenly, there was an explosion that kicked up a cloud of dust. Sasuke frowned, quickly preparing himself, wondering. Had that been Naruto, or did one of the enemies have exploding tags? He peered through the smoke as it cleared, and saw the clones that had surrounded two of the Iwa-nin missing, along with their prisoners. Instead, one of the Iwa-nin, a boy with blond hair cut shoulder-length, stood on the branch amid several holes blasted in the bark. Naruto—he assumed it was the original, being the only one around—was on the other side of him, grinning fiercely.

Sasuke felt a flare of pain from his neck, and the same strange energy from after he had woken began to hum through him. He narrowed his eyes, watching as the Iwa-nin dropped a scattering of strange white things on the ground around him. Then he jumped backwards with a sudden jerk as the things—now revealed to be strange, pure white insects of some kind—came to life and began closing on both him and Naruto with startling speed.

Sasuke, his eyes spinning, had plenty of time to reach into the holsters at his waist and pin each of the scuttling...things to the branch with shuriken. Glancing over at Naruto, he saw that he had attempted the same trick, but only gotten about a third of the oddities. The rest, reaching near him, jumped up at him from five feet away, aiming for his chest and face. Sasuke saw Naruto's eyes widen and chakra spin quickly within him, the sign of a fast kawarimi, and then the little creatures hit him and latched onto his clothes and hair.

They exploded a second later, each with the force of a good-sized exploding tag, and Sasuke winced. If that had been Naruto, and not a clone, it would have injured him badly. Someone without an ethereal demon physician inside them would have been killed.

The mark on his neck twinged at the thought, and as the smoke of the explosion cleared and the Iwa-nin gaped at the lack of a corpse, he felt tendrils of itching fire spread over his shoulder and up his face. He lunged forward, his speed greater than he had ever been capable of before, and smashed into the Iwa-nin just as he tried to jump off the branch. The result was both of them flying forward and falling through the air. Sasuke turned in midair as he fell, clasping his hands in a ram seal and doing a fast shunshin. He landed on a branch farther above, and quickly scanned the area for the Iwa-nin with the exploding spiders.

He caught sight of that enemy about where he had been, but something was odd. He was not falling, but somehow gliding through the air, aiming for the lowest branch of the nearest tree. As Sasuke watched, he flipped in midair and landed, harder than would have been comfortable, but not nearly so much so as hitting the ground. Then Sasuke saw more flickers of white, peeling off from the Iwa-nin's legs and arms and flying around him, like tiny bats or something. _Did those help him land? What are they?_

Wary of the flying oddities, he shunshinned down to a branch just above the Iwa-nin's and across from it, checking them out. They _were_ tiny bats, and they were flying around. And they appeared to be the same as those spiders, so he had to assume that they could explode on command. _It was going to be easy, was it, Naruto?_

Speaking of whom, that boy himself had just jumped down onto the branch near the Iwa-nin. He was grinning broadly, as if his opponent hadn't just attacked him with intent to kill. The Iwa blond turned with a snarl on his face, and pointed. Three of the bats that had been circling around him now flew straight at Naruto, and a few spiders dropped from the Iwa-nin's sleeves and followed. Naruto saw the incoming hostiles and danced backward, the grin never leaving his face. He pulled shuriken and, this time, launched them one by one instead of attempting Sasuke's flurry trick, successfully knocking the three bats out of the air. When they were gone, he reversed direction and launched himself forward, leaping over the spiders as they tried to attack him. He closed on the blond Iwa-nin quickly, and his opponent suddenly looked apprehensive and drew a kunai. With a gesture, he directed the remainder of the white bats at Naruto, but before they could reach him Naruto grinned.

"You like playing with explosives? Here!" he shouted, and chakra moved inside him in a very familiar pattern. Sasuke jerked in surprise— _that was a clone?_ —but grinned as 'Naruto' exploded in a blast at least five time the size of any of the Iwa-nin's things. It was still rather smaller than the usual yield of an exploding clone; Naruto must have been going easy on him.

The Iwa-nin flew backwards, caught by the pressure wave, and landed on his back on the branch. He was struggling to his feet when another Naruto—the real one, or another clone?—dropped down from above.

"So, you want to surrender? I can do that as many times as you like," said he, the same grin on his face. Seriously, he was incapable of holding a grudge, if the only injury done was to himself. Sasuke was sure that if his opponent had somehow menaced Hinata that Naruto wouldn't have bothered to offer. The Iwa-nin did not take note of Naruto's generosity, however; he stood with a growl, and pulled something out of the pouch at his waist. It was another of those white things, a bigger one, and as the Iwa-nin did whatever he did to animate it it flew toward Naruto with lethal intent. Sasuke's eyes locked onto it. It looked like a pigeon, and was about the same size, much bigger than the bats or spiders that the Iwa-nin had used before. Presumably it had a correspondingly larger blast radius.

Sasuke's neck burned again, and the lines of fire beneath his flesh spread. _Enough of this._ He crossed the intervening distance with a shunshin, coming out of it in front of Naruto. A kunai flashed through the air and buried itself in the bird, freezing it and knocking it backward into the space between the branches, where it fell. A malignant but potent power filled him, urging him on, and as the Iwa-nin gaped, he flashed through three seals, muttering as he did so, and blew blazing fire at the enemy.

There was a scream, and then silence.

* * *

Sasuke's neck _ached_ , and he rubbed it impatiently, jumping through the trees after Naruto. Naruto had not taken his attack on the Iwa-nin well, immediately jumping on him for unnecessary brutality. He had insisted on forming a clone squad to take the enemy back to where the rest of the group waited, hoping that someone there could help him out; at a first look, it was only obvious that he was badly burned.

They landed on the branch where the others waited, the same one that the three fighters had vacated when the blond Iwa-nin blew up the clones holding him. The rest of the Konoha shinobi were waiting with varying degrees of patience, and the other two Iwa-nin stood there as well, the various pouches that should have adorned their outfits stripped from them, surrounded by small groups of Naruto. Naruto and the group of clones carrying the third Iwa-nin landed near them, and Sasuke followed along.

As he approached the group, he saw first several of Naruto's clones, then Team Eight, look at him with sudden surprise and familiar, half-repulsed fascination. He sighed, feeling the tendrils moving under the skin of his face, and focused on calming himself, convincing himself there was no threat. The marks began to retreat just as Naruto, presumably the original, turned to look at him.

"Sasuke! What are those?"

"Something else with this dumb mark," said Sasuke impatiently. Naruto frowned.

"I need to see that," he said, not giving Sasuke a chance to refuse, and walked around behind him. Sasuke held still as Naruto poked at his neck, until perhaps thirty seconds later the marks had retreated entirely and he snorted impatiently and moved away. Naruto did not protest, presumably having seen what he wanted to.

Sakura had gotten into some sort of conversation with some of Naruto's clones, and was now kneeling over the prone body of the Iwa genin he had burned, his blond hair now singed and gray at the ends. It was apparently serious, from what he could see of her face. He put that out of his mind and turned to Naruto.

"What was that about, dobe?"

Naruto was looking pensive and rather nervous, which was a strange expression to see on his usually-confident face. "There's a seal on there...it's really, really impressive, but...it's not nice, Sasuke. It's done something...really weird to your body, I can't even tell what, but from what I can see it must be some sort of miracle that you survived getting it put on you. And when it was spreading those lines all over your face...it's really not nice. You should get Kakashi to look at it, he knows more about it than I do, but...I don't know." He fell silent, noticeably shaken.

Sasuke glanced at Naruto measuringly. Apparently it was a big deal—Naruto hadn't looked that frightened even when fighting hopelessly against the impossibly strong snake-bastard the day before. As Sasuke kept watching, Naruto shook his head slowly and wandered away, his face half fearful, half contemplating.

At this point Sakura stood from where she was inspecting the burned Iwa-nin. Looking at him more closely, Sasuke kept himself from wincing—his face was blistered in red and white, and what was visible of his hands was worse. Naruto had laid him out flat on the branch, and he was unconscious. Sakura's face was grim, and her tone was flat.

"It's...not great. The burns aren't actually that bad, most places, but it's all over him. If he doesn't get treated real soon, he's probably going to die."

Naruto, or one of him, came up beside her. "Well, we'd best take him with us to the tower then. There's got to be medics there."

"There would be, yes," said Sakura, looking down. Her hands were mildly trembling, and Sasuke reminded himself that it had been just that morning that she had taken down the Oto kunoichi. She was likely to be still in an unstable state.

As clones of Naruto began gathering up the injured enemy again, Sasuke felt the need to respond. "Um, are we picking up stragglers here? Because as I've said before, this is a _competition._ And these guys aren't even our friends. Why bother?"

Naruto glared at him. "Don't complain, teme. You won't be the one carrying him. And we wouldn't have to do this if you hadn't torched him in the first place. We're just lucky he wasn't the one carrying the scrolls."

Sasuke glanced over at Team Eight, his interest momentarily diverted. "So we got the right scroll?"

Naruto nodded. "They had both of them. So now I guess we just head back to the tower."

Sasuke glanced back at the five clones holding the Iwa genin, but let the matter drop. "All right. We go?"

Naruto glanced at the other two Iwa-nin, who were standing together, closely flanked by shadow clones, uncertain. Their body language was that of those utterly confused—Sasuke supposed being surrounded by Naruto's clones, when wholly unused to his... _unique_ style of being, would do that.

"Hey, you two!" he said loudly, getting their attention. "We're taking your teammate with us. He got hurt pretty bad over there. You guys can make your own way to the tower. Try not to die." The clones around them pulled back, leaving the captured shinobi's weapons pouches on the branch behind them.

Team Eight, who had been clustered on the branch doing more or less nothing, stood and prepared to move out. Naruto crossed his hands and made a dozen more clones, who joined with those who had guarded the Iwa-nin and fanned out around them. Then the original picked up Hinata again, apparently oblivious to her luminous blush, and, glancing at Sasuke, jumped away again in the direction of the tower. Sasuke followed closely, and the rest of the group, including the five clones carrying the burned Iwa-nin, ran in their trail.

* * *

As they ran, Sasuke's mark itched, for all that he had forced it down earlier, and he slapped at it irritably. They had spread out as the group ran, leaving Sasuke somewhere in the middle, alongside the group of clones around their patient. The rhythm of land, scan for branches, jump, was so ingrained in him by now that he could do it without thinking, as any shinobi of Konoha could after the Academy, and as he followed in the path of the group Sasuke ran over the past few hours in his mind.

There was something odd about the mark. That was a given. It hurt him, when it was active, but what else? It gave him...energy. Some power, some strange thing...it had manifested when he fought the Iwa-nin, making him faster, stronger. It had also fueled the fireball he took him down with; Sasuke had not put any particular thought into overpowering the technique, and his ordinary fireball would only have surprised and injured the opponent, leaving him open for a knockout blow. Instead, the Iwa-nin was apparently near death's door, as if he had pushed the technique much further.

Naruto, in the lead, had stopped on a branch, and the whole group spread out along its length, gathering around him. Sasuke was only half listening, but caught something about scouting clones being picked off in some sort of strange genjutsu. There was a short discussion which apparently did not come out with anything useful, and when Naruto spoke next he wore an expression Sasuke had come to associate with _I'm pissed off and about to brute-force something using huge numbers of possibly exploding clones._

Sure enough, he crossed his hands and concentrated, and some predictably obscene number of clones filled the forest all around them. Sasuke reflected for a moment on how glad he was Naruto had stopped wearing that orange eyesore jumpsuit; one of him in that was bad enough, several hundred was really pushing it. The clones all moved forward in a disorderly kind of swarm in their direction of travel, and Naruto and the rest of the group followed along behind them.

As he took off again, Sasuke's hands unconsciously clenched. The mark made him stronger, well enough. It was not sufficient. He knew for certain that it would have availed him nothing against the snake-bastard, not if he was able to take Naruto down in fox-mode. And (his mind ran through its ordinary, conflicted list of associations at the name) Itachi...the genius, the perfect one, the one who took down the entire fearsome Uchiha Clan at an age when Sasuke was still a genin...he would be stronger, now. He had to assume that Itachi was stronger than anyone else he would ever meet—stronger than Kakashi, stronger than Zabuza, stronger than the snake-bastard, maybe even stronger than the Hokage. Nothing else would suffice.

And, predictably enough, meditations of power and Itachi turned into a flash back to _that night_. He had killed them all, with that sword—but once or twice, fighting some more prepared or more formidable opponent, he would simply look them in the eye, and they would collapse. He knew. He had memorized it, without ever intending so, in the three days that felt like thirty of Itachi's genjutsu. Had he done the same thing to them? Had they felt three days of torment in a second, before collapsing and being cut down?

Would that power have allowed him to beat the snake-bastard? Could it let him beat Itachi?

If it could, would it be worth it? Itachi had told him that the _mangekyou sharingan_ was unlocked by the death of the wielder's closest friend, by the wielder's hand. Sasuke glanced ahead at the five hundred identical loudmouths breaking trail for them. No prizes for guessing who that would be, here and now. And all emotional or moral issues aside, Sasuke would have some trouble killing Naruto anyway, with his clones and the fox. The seal twinged on his neck in...what? Anticipation?

...Damn Itachi anyway. He hadn't laid eyes on him in the six years since _that night_ , and he was still messing up Sasuke's life with his scorn and his challenges and his _mangekyou sharingan_.

Naruto jerked in midair and stopped on the next branch, laughing hard. The group gathered around him again, and Sasuke heard Hinata ask him what had amused him. The reply was none too coherent in the first place, and being interspersed with fits of laughter didn't help its comprehensibility any, but Sasuke gathered that some of his clones had found and incapacitated the enemies behind whatever genjutsu he had been concerned about before. Their fate was apparently hilariously amusing to the blond; knowing Naruto, this meant that it was none too gruesome, by the standards of shinobi, but probably disconcerting to the point of mild mental trauma.

The clones ahead of them had had similar reactions to that of Naruto himself, and began to slowly disperse as Sasuke watched, the effect filling the air with a thin haze. Naruto's own laughter began to abate as he gathered up Hinata again and took off, but he still grinned broadly. Sasuke followed along still, inwardly rolling his eyes.

It wasn't long after that before the foliage began to thicken anomalously, and their progress slowed as they were forced to take shorter jumps. Eventually they began to push green branches aside with every leap, and shortly after that they were forced to lose some altitude as the branches became thinner, too flimsy to hold their weight. They were almost on the ground when Sasuke saw the world opening out ahead of them, and they jumped down out of the trees—much smaller, now, almost down to the size of the ordinary trees that surrounded the village—to stand on the edge of a huge clearing, the sound of water not far off drawing the eye to a moderately large river. The view was dominated by the huge tower standing a few hundred yards away, on an island isolated by a split in the river's flow. Sasuke glanced to the sky, and saw the sun just perched on the horizon. He grinned.

Naruto was more demonstrative in his elation; letting Hinata down, he jumped into the air and attempted some sort of crude gymnastic demonstration, whooping all the while. Predictably enough, halfway through this he missed a twist and fell flat on his back; only a moment later he sat up, rubbing his head with a scowl.

Hinata giggled at this, and Naruto's face split into a grin as he bounced to his feet. Sasuke mentally shook his head at the demonstration, though he kept his face impassive; for all that he was unaware that the Hyuuga girl was smitten with him, Naruto certainly esteemed her happiness. He pushed past them both, wading through the thigh-high grass of the clearing, and felt the others at his back.

When he reached the river, wide and shallow here, he stepped down onto its surface without breaking stride. The water-walking took only moderate concentration; the irregularities in the river's flow were nothing to the waves in the ocean where he had learned. Reaching the other side, he turned about, seeing the others' crossing. Naruto and Sakura, of course, were standing on the water as easily as he had; so was Hinata, though she leaned on Naruto in favoring one leg. Both Kiba and Shino were wading on the riverbed, drenched up to their knees. Behind them all was another knot of Narutos, carrying between them the injured Iwa-nin.

The tower was a tall, tapered cylinder, painted faded red. A pair of double doors in a brighter red were set in the side, under a protruding bit of roof. They reached the door and passed through it in a shuffle, the six contestants moving forward into the high-ceilinged room. Naruto's clones instead stepped off to one side, laying down their burden before disappearing. Sasuke, looking back, was at first perplexed as to the origins of the stretcher on which the Iwa-nin lay, but reflected that it was probably out of one of Naruto's innumerable storage scrolls.

The rest were puzzling at the large poster on the far wall, which said something impenetrable, though apparently instructive, about Heaven and Earth. After a bit of puzzlement all round, Naruto scratched his head and spoke.

"Why don't we open the scrolls? They're chakra-active, so they probably do something. I guess it fits with all the Heaven and Earth blather." He gestured at the poster.

There was a round of glances between the genin, but no one objected, so the teams separated themselves by several feet and took out their scrolls. Shino was carrying both of Team Eight's at his waist, while Sasuke dived into his backpack. He handed one to Naruto, and as if at an unseen signal they both pulled the scrolls open.

Sasuke glanced down at the writing on the scroll, and it was familiar, and a quick activation of his eyes confirmed that chakra had flared and begun to move as he opened it. Naruto recognized it at about the same time, to appearances, since they both released the seals simultaneously, and Naruto shouted with a bit of urgency in his voice, "Drop the scrolls!"

A moment later, the summoning array on the scrolls activated in a flash of chakra and a plume of smoke. Sasuke had just distinguished a standing figure in the cloud when the other team's scrolls activated, not helping the visibility in the room. The haze took a half-minute or so to clear, and when it did, the two figures—both Konoha shinobi wearing chuunin vests—glanced at each other, then at the six genin in surprise.

"Two teams at once? That's new," said theirs, in a startled voice. He had spiky hair and a bandage across his nose, and looked familiar somehow. "Hey, Izumo." This with a look at the other chuunin, whose hitai-ite covered his head entirely.

"That is a bit odd," said the other. "What are you guys up to?" He looked around at the genin suspiciously.

"Hinata-chan's team helped us out in the forest, so we helped them get here," said Naruto, staring at the chuunin with a not entirely friendly look. He noticed it, and laughed.

"I suppose there were no rules broken...So I guess it works. Hey, you guys are the, uh, second and third teams back, after those Suna kids. So since you're back so early, the event won't be over for another four days or so, you get to stay here in the tower until the finishing ceremony."

Naruto scowled. "Why can't we just go home?"

"Rules, kid. No one enters the forest until the bell rings at the start, and no one leaves the forest until the ceremony and the drawing at the end. Sorry." He walked over to a door in a side wall, opening it to reveal a stairwell up. "The rooms are all upstairs, and there's showers and so forth. You get pick of the empty rooms, one room per team. Go on up."

Naruto frowned. "Is there an infirmary or something? Because we brought this guy along"—he indicated the stretcher near the outer door—"because Uchiha _Katon_ -happy here"—with a glower at Sasuke—"lit him up pretty bad. He needs some medical help. Uh, Hinata-chan does too, probably." He glanced over at Hinata, who nodded, blushing.

The chuunin with the bandanna-style hitai-ite—Izumo, apparently—walked over to the stretcher and whistled. "Wow, that is pretty bad. We'll take care of him. Kotetsu?"

The two picked up the stretcher between them, and Izumo glanced at Hinata. "You need help right away, or can it wait?"

Hinata blushed again. "Ah...I can wait a bit."

Sakura came up alongside the stretcher, looking questioningly between the two chuunin. "Um...so you know, he has...I think it's an Iwa kekkei genkai...but he has mouths on his hands. That exploding-clay bloodline. So don't be surprised, and you might want to tell the medics."

Kotetsu peered at the Iwa-nin, but didn't put him down to look. "Really? All right. Well, we'll be off. Rooms are where rooms are." They disappeared out another door.

The two teams climbed up the stairs in a train of clattering footsteps, reaching a floor with a long hall and doors off both sides, like a hotel. A glance inside one of the rooms confirmed that they contained multiple beds, all separated by rails with sliding privacy curtains. Team Eight took the first room they passed; Team Seven moved onward to the next one.

Inexplicably enough, Kakashi was leaning against the next room's wall. He glanced up from the orange book in his hand, which disappeared behind him, and gave one of his trademark mostly-obscured smiles.

"So you guys made it! With impressive speed, too! I should expect nothing less from my shiny genin."

Naruto grinned widely. "Got it, sensei!" Sasuke smirked, and Sakura gave a more restrained smile.

Kakashi nodded, and stood straight, a certain tension entering his stance. "So, just in case...did anything...unusual happen, in the forest?"

Sasuke glanced at Naruto, who had glanced at him. Kakashi glanced between the both of them and raised an eyebrow. Naruto spoke, rather slowly.

"...Yeah. Something did. We were going to talk to you about it, but I guess you already know something."

Kakashi's face, what one could see of it, was frozen, and he leaned imperceptibly forward. "Explain."

"We got attacked by this guy. He was...freaky strong, beat both me and Sasuke up without even trying. Hurt me pretty badly, but I'm fine now because of my inner furball. But he put this weird, pretty nasty seal on Sasuke's neck. We thought you could look...." He trailed off as the color drained from Kakashi's face.

* * *

Kakashi strode through the halls of the tower at just short of a full run. He had left his team behind in their room upstairs after quickly hearing the pertinent details of the attack; really, what had actually happened was not particularly relevant. All three were alive and healthy, but Sasuke had been marked with that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned seal. Mitarashi Anko's suffering had been on the edges of his awareness since she had been marked and cast off by the traitor, but aside from assessing her as a possible threat to Konoha (conclusion: not much of one), he had never really thought about her or Orochimaru's obscure researches. But now...

He burst into the room on the ground floor where she stood, pacing back and forth in front of the desk where, if she had any actual work to do, she would do it. Her face was tight with uncertainty and tension; she hadn't slept since finding the dead bodies of the impersonated Kusa-nin and encountering her old teacher the day before. Kakashi had made sure his tread was heavy approaching the door; her habit of confronting any surprise or unexpected situation by application of bladed weapons first, questions later if at all, was amusing precisely until it nearly injured him.

She whirled about even so, and relaxed only halfway when she recognized him. The tension in his gait no doubt did not help. She had not had the chance to begin her question when he spoke, urgently. "We know what Orochimaru was doing in the forest."

"What? What is it?"

"My student, Uchiha Sasuke, has been marked with the Cursed Seal."

She glanced down to one side and bit her lip, her hand going, seemingly unconsciously, to her neck. It was a long moment before she spoke. "I'm...sorry."

"Don't act like he's dead," Kakashi snapped. Then, hearing himself, consciously reined himself in, taking a deep breath. "My apologies. I can deal with the seal, for the moment. It'll take the rest of the evening, but he'll certainly be fine even if there's a preliminary round. I...wanted to ask you if you could talk to him later on. Tell him what you know about the seal and Orochimaru. If he's recruiting...it can't hurt to rub it in Sasuke's face that Orochimaru doesn't know what loyalty means."

Anko nodded, her lips tightening. "I can do that. The Uchiha, is it? If he goes off to Him...well, wouldn't the whole council with their Uchiha obsession just scream. And we can't have that." A flash of dark humor, there. "Is that all he did? Do we know?"

"Are there any tapes? I was glancing around the feeds earlier, before I got bored—some camera's got to have seen him."

She shook her head. "He was taking out the cameras as he went, before they ever picked him up. The first few got put down as malfunctions, heaven knows we get enough of them, and by the time anything looked suspicious we already knew. We can kind of guess where he went and when, but we don't know anything about what he was doing."

"How long did he even have? From the beginning at ten or so, to—when did you find him?"

"Around sunset. He had a good eight hours in there unchallenged. Do you know when your brats got attacked?"

"Early enough. Around an hour in, was their guess. If he wanted to do something, he had the time."

Anko sighed. "Yeah...we'll have to be careful. He's playing a bigger game than the Uchiha alone, though. He always is."

"Any luck with the ANBU searching?"

Anko snorted bitterly. "What do you think? It's Orochimaru. Even if they found him...the Old Man can't move fast enough that he'd get to them before he was gone. The only thing ANBU could do against Orochimaru is eat the peanut." There was a sort of bleak pride in her voice— _sure I got screwed over, but at least I got screwed over by the very best available. Or worst._

Kakashi nodded slowly. "I suppose Hokage-sama knows everything we do?"

Anko gave an impatient nod. "Of course. There's really not much to do here. I just wanted to know what he was doing...but I guess that question is as close to answered as it's going to get. I guess..." She trailed off and sighed.

"You should sleep. There's not much purpose to staying up at this juncture. It's not like he's going to attack the tower, and if he did it's probably the safest place in Konoha aside from the Hokage's Tower."

"You're right," said Anko, wearily. "Go deal with your brat. I'll talk to him sometime tomorrow."

Kakashi nodded and withdrew.

* * *

Naruto frowned as Kakashi came back into the room. He had not so much debriefed as interrogated them after hearing of the snake-bastard's attack, and then he had run off without any explanation whatsoever and left them to stew for an hour.

Kakashi was not so tense as he had been, but looking at Sasuke, who was staring at him guardedly, made him wince slightly. "Sasuke, come with me."

"What's happening?" Sasuke's voice was not precisely insubordinate, but it managed to convey a definite expectation of answers, preferably sooner rather than later.

Kakashi was not swayed in any sense. "We're dealing with that seal. Naruto was right—it's not a nice thing. The procedure is rather cumbersome and leaves you incapacitated for a day or so—it's a good thing you got here so early, or else there wouldn't be time before the end." Without further explanation, he beckoned Sasuke out the door, and the dark-haired boy followed only slightly grudgingly. Naruto, who had opened his mouth to ask something, scowled momentarily and followed Sasuke.

They had gone down the stairs and through a door into what looked like a hospital ward, with beds along one wall, before Kakashi took notice of him. He had been sitting Sasuke down in the middle of a large, elaborate seal array on the floor, which looked to be some sort of stupidly complicated seal-making seal. Naruto was distracted from his nearly instinctive perusal of the array by Kakashi's voice. "Naruto, was there something you wanted?"

Naruto took several steps closer to the seal, and Sasuke. He had removed his shirt, leaving the malignant three-tomoe mark easily visible, and Naruto peered at it. "I just...I wanted to see. That seal...." He was interrupted in his further examination of the mark by Sasuke glancing up at him with bare tolerance.

"Can you let Kakashi get on with it, dobe? I want to get this over with."

Naruto bit his lip. The characters that specified the operation of Sasuke's seal were tight and tiny, so much so that they appeared as simple solid marks to any casual observer; it took a bit of fuinjutsu knowledge to puzzle out that the tiny irregularities in the tomoe were really sealing marks. Once one saw that, however, one could not miss that it was much more complex and longer than even the huge array around them. Bearing in mind the relations between the seals, there was no way that the larger seal could unravel or remove the small; it must be some sort of limiter, or a disrupter.

_...disrupts it in unpredictable ways...._

Naruto frowned suddenly, just as Kakashi grabbed his arm to pull him out of the seal array, and turned to his teacher. "Kakashi-sensei, this thing is just some sort of limiter gizmo, right?"

Kakashi raised his visible eyebrow as he guided Naruto out of the circle. "That's true. How did you know?"

"That thing on Sasuke's neck...whoever made it must be scary good. It's too big to be taken off by something like this—I think you'd need...I don't even know."

Kakashi looked at him, his face betraying mild surprise, and nodded slowly. "Again, true. This seal is the result of years of research by a...brilliant, if twisted man. No one has ever managed to remove it."

Naruto took a shaky breath. "Sensei...if there was a way to just get rid of the seal, perfectly all at once, would that be a good thing?"

Kakashi looked at him sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Would it? I mean, if that whole seal was just gone like it hadn't gotten put on him."

"It would be a very good thing. But as I've just said, that has been tried several times, even by those with fuinjutsu abilities the equal of the man who made this one, and always failed. Why do you ask?"

It took another deep breath before Naruto managed to continue. "There...there's this thing, that I can do with the fox. I try not to think about it too much, because it messes with my head, but...I'll just show you." He cast around for something miscellaneous, and grabbed a cheap metal chair from beside one of the beds. Kakashi and Sasuke were both watching with interest now, as he held it easily by one leg and opened the seal. The familiar feeling crept over him, the rush of power just inches beyond his grasp, and he could see the death of things on the world. Sasuke was just shifting impatiently when he pulled a senbon from one side of his thigh holster and pushed it into a carefully-chosen spot on the seat of the chair. It sunk in far more deeply than should have been possible, and a moment later, inexplicably to those without a demon's eyes, the chair split in tiny pieces and clattered to the ground.

Kakashi's visible eye was wide as Naruto looked at him, flinching slightly at the sight of the lines on his face. "Um, Naruto...would you care to explain that, please?"

Naruto sighed. "It's the fox again. I asked it to explain once and it went into this long arrogant rant about the concept of death and destruction and so forth. But it's like I can...I don't know...see the ways things could die. Or something. What it works out to is that I can destroy anything. I see these points and lines on stuff, and if I stab things there they...fall apart, or break, or die."

Sasuke stared at the pieces of chair on the floor, and then looked back at Naruto. "That tree, when you were fighting the snake guy in the woods...that was you. I just figured it was him doing some insanely strange jutsu, but it was you, wasn't it?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah. Lot of good it did me. Maybe if I got close enough to the guy to stab him it would have worked, but he was just impossible. And...I don't like to think about it too much. If I stay in the mode where I can see it for too long, I start...seeing things fall apart, like an illusion. People, too. It's...not nice."

Kakashi shifted. "From the thread of your conversation earlier, I assume you think this could be used on Orochimaru's seal?"

"Is that the guy's name?" said Naruto. "Yeah. I think it could. I can see the lines on it, and Fuzzbutt told me a while ago that it worked on seals. Of course, he might be lying, but...for some reason he usually doesn't do that. So yeah."

Kakashi stared at Naruto for a moment, then nodded. "You can try it. If it works...that would be very good. That seal...."

Naruto stepped forward toward Sasuke, who regarded him with mild suspicion. Naruto met his eyes for several moments, and then Sasuke nodded and turned, exposing the seal on the side of his neck. Naruto stared at it, isolating the network of lines on it from those on Sasuke himself, finding the single point that would destroy the thing. His hand moved, slowly, still holding the same senbon, and slid it precisely into the mark.

Writhing purple strands, glowing with sickly light, sprang up around Sasuke's body, and every muscle in his body clenched. He fell over to one side, his breath escaping in a hiss through a jaw clamped shut. Naruto jumped backwards in startlement—he had not anticipated any such reaction—and saw the purple ropes begin to peel off Sasuke's skin and disappear into the air. It was finished in moments—all trace of the malevolent energy was gone, and Sasuke lay on his side, breathing heavily.

Kakashi had moved quickly forward when Sasuke fell, but retreated from the angry purple manifestation. He took a more hesitant step forward now, and bent over Sasuke to examine his neck. As soon as he saw it, he made a slight twitch of surprise, and looked more closely. Naruto stepped forward to see.

The three-tomoe shape was gone. In its place was a loose circle of black, becoming lighter as one went out, as if black ink had spattered there. The subtleties of the seals in the three-tomoe mark were nowhere to be seen.

Sasuke's breathing had calmed, and suddenly he swore loudly. The two others backed off as he slowly sat up. Sasuke lifted one hand to his neck and rubbed it absently, shaking his head.

"Fuck, that thing was messing with my head," he said, and suddenly winced. "Damn it...wow, that was scary. I didn't know a thing about it until it was gone." He rolled his neck with a pop, and glanced up at Naruto, hesitating. "...Thanks, Naruto. That could have been bad." He stood, still introspective, and then suddenly shook his head violently. " _Fuck!_ I was thinking...I actually considered...Wow. Thank you _very much,_ Naruto."

Naruto nodded hesitantly. "Considered...?"

Sasuke shook his head again, emphatically. "It doesn't matter, because I'm _not going to do it._ Bastard Itachi..." he muttered, under his breath.

Naruto gave him a dubious look, but let it pass. Kakashi was staring at him incredulously.

"Naruto...?"

Naruto gave him a weary look. "Yeah?"

"You just...?"

"Nothing that special. It's just...a special ability. Not too surprising, is it?"

Kakashi shook his head, staring at him. "Naruto...I think maybe you should try to keep this a secret. There are...certain people...who would feel threatened by it, I think."

Naruto shrugged. "So what else is new? How many people know Sasuke had that mark on him?"

"Only a few. Anko, the Hokage, possibly whoever looks at the security tapes for the last few hours. Anko in particular is going to be very curious. Very...."

Naruto frowned. "Anko? The proctor? What about her?"

Kakashi opened his mouth, then closed it again and waited a moment before speaking. "You know...I think I'll let you find that out for yourself."

Naruto gave Kakashi an even more dubious look, then turned back to Sasuke. "You all right?"

"I'm fine." He glanced around. "Let's get back to the room. I wouldn't mind sleeping, at this point."

Naruto nodded. "Been quite the long day, hasn't it. Uh...Kakashi-sensei?"

Kakashi waved them onward. "Go ahead. I'll just..." He looked around, rather chagrined. "I'll just clean up this elaborate binder seal that I spent the last hour making. Night."

"Good night," said Naruto.

* * *

That night, they slept deeply and long, and it seemed that Team Eight had had the same idea. The next morning, refreshed, Naruto bounced out of the bed to find Sasuke already gone. The curtain was drawn around Sakura's bed, but sounds of faint breathing hinted that she was still within and asleep.

He dressed quickly in spare clothes—the ones he had worn in the forest not being fit for human presence any longer—and ducked out of the room, finding himself in the same hallway. A diffuse light was visible further down the way, illuminating the whole hall; Naruto followed along to find a stretch of corridor with large windows all along one wall. Patches of light bloomed across from them, almost painfully bright.

The hall ran in a loop all around the second floor. Naruto poked around and found only the doors to bedrooms and the single stairwell that they had come up by, which continued on upward to the higher floors of the tower. After determining this, he descended to the first floor, and proceeded to poke around. Aside from the room they had first entered from outside, there was an infirmary with three separate wards and a huge, echoing, darkened room that looked almost like an arena.

Halfway through this exploration, Naruto ran across Sasuke in a hallway. After it was finished, they went back to the stairwell together, intending simply to return to their room. Leaning against the wall outside their door, however, was the exam proctor, Anko. Seeing them, she grinned briefly.

"You're Kakashi's brats, aren't you? Which would make you the Uchiha." This with a look at Sasuke, who nodded guardedly.

"Great! So I hear you had a run-in with a certain bastardy snake-man a few days ago."

Naruto looked at her. "Yeah, his name is Orochimaru apparently...." He stopped, frozen. "Damn. _Damn_ damn." Suddenly shaking, he leaned against the wall and ran a hand across his face. "I...just made that connection now. Orochimaru. The Sannin Orochimaru. No wonder he beat us so easily."

Anko was looking at him with dark amusement. "Yup. You should be honored to have fought him and survived, really." The humor drained out of her face. "Uchiha. I hear you've got a little seal problem."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow and stared back at her. "Not a problem anymore."

Anko stood up straight, looking at him severely. "Wrong. Don't think that. Just because it's been sealed...it's still dangerous. You have to—"

Sasuke cut her off. "I said, it's not a problem anymore." His face was mildly amused.

Anko stared at him. "What do you mean?" Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed Sasuke's hand and yanked him around, grabbing the collar of his shirt and pushing it aside to see his neck. Seeing it, she froze momentarily, then looked up, releasing him. "That...is not a Cursed Seal of Heaven."

"Correct," said Sasuke, rather impatiently, readjusting his shirt. "I did say it wasn't a problem. Naruto got rid of it."

Anko's attention snapped to Naruto. "You'd be Uzumaki, then. What in the name of all the kami did you _do?_ "

Naruto returned her gaze, uneasy about revealing his secret. "I'm just...special that way."

Anko took a step forward and grabbed him by the front of the shirt, just short of shaking him. "Don't bullshit me. What did you do, and can you do it again?"

Naruto tried to dislodge her hand, to no avail. "Sure I could do it again," he grumbled, "if you see another creepy-ass seal around here. But since I _don't_ , could you please let go of me?"

She let him go, and for a moment he thought she was backing down, but instead she turned one shoulder toward him and yanked her shirt down. He gaped at the seal. There was nothing to say, really, but.... "Oh."

She favored him with a tight grin. "Yeah. So can you, or can you not get rid of this thing like you apparently did for Wonderboy here?"

Sasuke stared at her for a moment. "How long have you had that?"

She glanced at him irritably. "Longer than you've been alive."

Sasuke was eyeing her with strange emotion in his face. "Naruto...do it."

"Um, Sasuke..."

"That seal is nasty. It messes with your head. If hers was doing what mine was...it's a wonder she hasn't run off to join him, or tried to kill the Hokage, or something. One day was bad enough. Get it off of her."

Naruto looked at him strangely, but nodded. "All right...Uh, Mitarashi-san, if you could show me the seal?"

She bared her shoulder again, turning away from him, and he pulled out a senbon and opened the door to the fox. It was quicker, this time, discerning the network on the seal itself separately from that on the proctor's skin. As if in the background, he heard her ask Sasuke, "So, he did this to you? What does he do?"

Sasuke had not yet replied when Naruto pushed the needle into the point on her shoulder. Like Sasuke, she stiffened and collapsed, but let out not even a whimper of pain. The same purple strands boiled off her, leaving her on the ground.

Then she stood, as nonchalantly as if she had no more than tripped. One hand was on her neck, and a look of wonder was on her face.

"It's gone...." she whispered, as if unbelieving. Then a manic grin spread slowly over her face. "It's GONE!" She broke into laughter, of a rather menacing sort, and grabbed Naruto in a bear hug, crushing his face into her chest. He broke into rather feeble struggles, which he was relatively sure did not play a part in her decision to release him a moment later, still cackling.

He was recovering when she turned back to him. "Thank you unto eternal life, brat! It's GONE! Hah!" She was about to rush off somewhere when he found the strength to speak.

"Uh...Mitarashi-san? Could you...."

She turned back to him with uncanny speed, grinning. "Yeah? What is it?"

"Could you not tell people it's me that did this? I'm trying to keep it kind of secret...."

She raised one eyebrow, looking him over appraisingly. "Yeah? Let me guess, it has to do with Mr. Big, Red and Foxy?"

Naruto blinked once at the alias. "Uh...yeah. And...people are stupid. So...."

She grinned predatorily. "Worry not. I'll just say it was magic. See you, brat!" And she rushed off.

Naruto took a slow step backward, shaking his head. "Um...wow."

Sasuke glanced at him in mild amusement. "Indeed."

* * *

Back in the room again, they found Sakura, standing in front of the mirror over the sink. Seeing her, Sasuke made a double take. "Um...Sakura?"

The girl turned to them, and Naruto looked at her in surprise. Her hair, that had previously run down her back like a curtain, had been cut off, ending now above her shoulders. Naruto was speechless, but Sasuke spoke rather slowly, staring at her. "Sakura? What...did you do?"

She was looking down, her eyes on the floor. "It...it's just...." She sighed. "When I was fighting that Sound kunoichi...she was...she caught me by the hair, and threw me down. Could have killed me without even trying. But she didn't, she started taunting me about how I shouldn't be a kunoichi, that I spent too much time on my hair and wasn't...serious. She let her guard down...and that's when I got her with the kunai." She shook her head slowly. "It's...I don't know. We almost died. If she hadn't...and Hinata...that person who put the seal on you...I was just so useless! I'm going to try...to not be useless anymore. I guess...." She trailed off.

Naruto had to look at Sasuke twice to be sure of his expression. He was grinning—an actual, pleased grin, not a smirk, neither sardonic nor sarcastic nor cutting. When he spoke, his words might have been vintage, arrogant Sasuke, but his voice was almost genuinely congratulatory.

"Hn. It's about time."

He sat on the bed and dropped backwards, still wearing that grin.

* * *

The novelty of hanging around in a mostly-empty tower for hours on end with little to nothing to do quickly wore off. The first day was quite tolerable; Naruto explored the tower, looked out over the forest and clearing from the balconies, went to see Hinata where she had been consigned to an infirmary bed—she explained readily that the injury was not all that serious, and she would be fully healed by the next day. Later that day, an unfamiliar chuunin with Inuzuka clan markings on her cheeks came by looking for Kiba; apparently she was his sister, and an expert in the treatment of the clan's trademark companion animals. Akamaru, who was still incapacitated, whined happily at seeing her, and when she left he could at least walk again. Shino's father had come and gotten special permission to take him away; he was off doing something secretive and Aburame-ish relating to the bugs he hosted. Naruto had no particular problem with Shino or his clan, but all the same he was glad that he didn't know any details.

Only a few other teams came in. By odd enough coincidence, they were all younger Leaf teams who Naruto knew. Shikamaru declaimed that the tower area was troublesome. It was the second-to-last day of the exam when Tenten and Lee arrived with their Hyuuga teammate. Socialization between the teams in the tower was present, but limited; the Suna-nin who had come in first largely kept to themselves, for which Naruto was grateful. The two elder were merely reticent, but Gaara, the near-emotionless redhead, was frankly creepy. Hinata had, with much nervous stuttering, related her team's encounter with them, and Naruto couldn't blame her for being frightened. Sand, apparently, could be a lethal weapon. It lent point to his flat demeanor and casual threats of death.

Naruto had just woken up on the last day of the exam—having nothing to do except occasionally spar with Sasuke in the large rooms downstairs, he had completely fallen off his usual schedule of waking nearly with the sun—when Kakashi knocked several times on the door, then opened it and poked his head in.

"Best get up, my shiny genin! It's time."


	14. Contests: Tone

The large arena-type area on the ground floor was sparsely populated with genin, who mostly stood around in their teams and scoped out the other competitors. Team Seven filed in close together and stood along one wall. Naruto shot a grin at Hinata, who was standing with her team a bit further along the same wall, and she returned it shyly.

A minute or so behind them was another Konoha team, one who had not been at the tower, apparently having come in just that day. Naruto recognized the silver-haired Kabuto, but the others were unfamiliar—and very strange, with their identical attire and black cloth masks. Naruto turned away with a frown.

The Suna team were reclusive and stormy-looking, except for the youngest, who was reclusive and completely emotionless, as usual. The three teams of their Academy class had gravitated together, and formed a sort of superclump near the entrance. Tenten's team was a little further isolated, her Hyuuga teammate staring around contemptuously. They all turned to look as a door near the back opened and a line of people filed in.

The first through was the Hokage, in full regalia, his long white robes fluttering around him. Following him were a group of jounin, Kakashi somewhere in the middle; as they spread out into a line behind the Hokage, Naruto realized that they were the senseis of each team in the arena. One, the Suna jounin presumably assigned to the only team present from that village, kept shooting nervous looks at them, but most of the Konoha nin were unmoving.

The Hokage had taken a sort of stage at the front of the room, just in front of the huge statue of, of all things, a pair of hands in a ram seal. Then striding in through the same door came Anko, grinning broadly. With a loud whistle, she called the teams to attention.

"All right, brats! Line yourselves up by team, all front and center, march!"

There was a bit of scuffling around as the teams arranged themselves in files and stared up at the purple-haired woman, who had taken a position just below and to one side of the Hokage. When it had mostly subsided, she called out again.

"Congratulations! You have passed the second test of the Exam, which means"—she grinned predatorily—"that you get to move on to the _hard_ bit!"

There was a soft collective groan from most of the contestants. Notable among the silent were Naruto, who, if he hadn't quite become immune to Anko for himself, could at least enjoy her effects on others; Gaara, who showed no sign of having heard anything; and Neji, whose face tightened as if in distaste. Anko grinned at the effect, and continued.

"Before we continue with the exams, Hokage-sama will speak to you! Listen to him!" She turned half sideways, facing the Hokage, and spoke in a much quieter voice. "If you would, Hokage-sama."

The Hokage nodded, and began some lecture on the place of the Chuunin Exams in inter-village politics that Naruto mostly tuned out. As the old man began to wind down, another shinobi in a chuunin vest stepped forward from the line behind him, and spoke up as the Hokage finished.

"Greetings, contestants. My name is Gekkou Hayate." He stopped to cough several times, then continued. "I am the proctor of the Third Exam." Cough. "The format of the Third Exam," cough, "is a simple tournament of one-on-one battles," cough, "between the contestants. Unfortunately, too many individuals passed the second exam," cough, "for all of them to compete in the Third." Cough. "Therefore, we will now be having a preliminary round." Cough. Naruto fidgeted; that cough of his made the proctor infuriating to listen to. Couldn't he get that looked at somehow?

"From now on, the exam tests only individuals," cough, "rather than teams. Therefore, if you wish to withdraw you may do so without hurting your teammates' chances." Cough. "You will be fighting in the preliminaries immediately after we finish here. I must now ask," cough, "anyone who is unsure to withdraw from the tournament. Deadly force is not prohibited during these contests."

Naruto started and glanced around. There was an uneasy murmur, but it didn't seem like anyone was dropping out. Until—

"Uh, Gekkou-san, I'd like to withdraw." It was the older Leaf genin, Kabuto. Naruto glanced over at him as he stepped out of the line and walked slowly forward. He met the eyes of his teammates, but Naruto could not see what, if anything, passed between them.

The proctor nodded. "Very well. Yakushi Kabuto, is it? It is so noted. You may stay and watch the preliminaries if you like, or you may go."

Kabuto nodded and disappeared out the door they had entered by.

No one else withdrew, though a few looked uncertain, and after a moment the proctor continued. "Very well, if that's the only one...We have an odd number, then, which means that one contestant will receive a by into the finals." Cough. "Your matchings will be determined randomly and displayed on the screen there." Naruto saw the big screen above the bizarre statue, which he hadn't noticed before. "The winner of each match will advance to the finals," cough, "while the loser is eliminated. The rules are as follows. No techniques or tactics are prohibited. The victory is determined by unconsciousness, death, surrender, or my decision." Cough. "Though deadly force is not prohibited, I will intervene to prevent unnecessary killings. Therefore, if I command you to stop, you must stop. Is that understood?"

There was a round of nods from those who were inclined to nodding, and the examiner was apparently satisfied. "Very good. Please adjourn to the balconies now. The first match will be displayed momentarily."

* * *

The rookie teams had gravitated to nearby locations as usual, this time forming three clumps spaced along the railing of one balcony. Tenten's team had chosen the same balcony, but set up camp somewhat further along it; in stubborn nonconformity, the Suna team and the two remaining members of Kabuto's were across from them, an uncomfortable distance between them.

Sasuke grinned as he leaned on the rail, staring at the board, which had lit up but did not yet display any words. Naruto and Sakura had flanked him, and both watched it equally avidly, blank though it was. There seemed to be some kind of delay, however, and Naruto soon became impatient.

"What happened to 'momentarily'?" he muttered irritably, shuffling his feet. Sasuke glanced at him with tolerant amusement.

"Really that eager to fight, Naruto?"

"Well, sure! Aren't you?"

"Well, yes." Sasuke smirked with a flash of sinister anticipation. "I haven't been having good luck with that lately. It will be most cathartic to fight someone I can actually beat without the bastard-seal messing with me."

Naruto gave him a dry look. "Confident, aren't you?"

"Aren't you?"

"Well, yes." Naruto flashed a grin.

The exchange was interrupted by Sakura prodding Sasuke in the side and pointing up at the board, which was now flicking through names faster than the eye could see. Sasuke gave her a momentary surprised look before watching the board. After a few seconds, it slowed, each name lingering for just a moment longer than the last. They had just approached the threshold of legibility when the cycle stopped, two names finally selected.
    
    
      
                Aburame Shino 
                      vs. 
                Akimichi Chouji
    
    

The two named peeled off from their teams, Shino emotionless as usual, Chouji reluctantly. Shino had already disappeared along the balcony toward the staircase when Chouji's sensei, apparently named Asuma, managed to convince him to fight with promises of barbecue. Naruto privately wondered if he could get Kakashi to pay for an all-night ramen marathon some time or another, and discarded the idea as self-evidently ridiculous.

They stood across from each other in the middle of the floor, the coughing proctor between them. Though they did not speak especially loudly, Naruto could hear them well enough; the room had good acoustics.

Chouji was looking generically uncomfortable. "Uh...good luck, Shino," he said, uncertainly.

"May the best man win," said Shino, more quietly than Chouji; Naruto could barely hear it. At this point, the examiner called the match to begin, though neither boy moved.

Chouji sighed. "I didn't want to do this in the first place," he grumbled, taking a desultory step into a stance. Shino was quiet for a moment before replying.

"It would be unjust to allow this match to continue when you are not emotionally prepared to fight to your capacity. I suggest that you call to mind the emotional state that would occur if I had insulted the stature you require as an Akimichi."

Chouji stared at Shino blankly. "What?"

Shino paused for a moment, visibly changing gears. "It might help if you pretend that I had just called you fat."

Chouji looked at him in mild surprise. "Okay...I can do that." He took a step backward, abandoning his rudimentary stance in favor of a straight ready posture. His face hardened, turning almost angry, a strange thing to see on the usually placid boy. After several deep breaths, he glared at Shino, who had apparently not moved.

"Baika no jutsu!"

In a burst of blue chakra, he suddenly expanded into a ball quite a bit taller than he had been beforehand. Naruto stared in fascination; he knew of the Akimichi techniques in theory, but he had never seen them in action before. Chouji's face was implacable as he stared Shino down, at least until his head disappeared into the ball, which was now spinning in place in midair, held up by some sort of odd chakra jets.

"Nikudan sensha!"

Chouji, now completely unrecognizable as human, dropped to the ground spinning and shot forward towards Shino. The Aburame crouched and jumped aside, his hands never leaving his pockets, but Chouji demonstrated rather more agility than would have been expected of a huge rolling ball, and looped around in a large circle, coming back at him with equal speed. Shino dodged this pass more closely than the last one; Chouji had anticipated the dodge and jinked sideways toward him, but his momentum betrayed him, and Shino barely avoided him.

On the next pass, Shino did not attempt to dodge sideways, but instead jumped high, letting the juggernaut pass underneath him. A growl of frustration, oddly menacing, emanated from the giant ball, and as Chouji looped around again Naruto saw Shino crouching in preparation for another jump.

This time, as Shino jumped high, Chouji followed him, somehow propelling himself up as if he had hit a ramp. They both hung in the air for a moment, as time seemed to slow; then, following their inescapable paths, Chouji closed on Shino and just barely grazed him. Chouji continued on undeflected, landing with an almighty crash and leaving cracks in the floor behind him as he continued rolling. Shino was thrown across the room, twisting in midair to land on his feet and skid, his hands finally leaving his pockets as he shielded his face. As he stood up again, his motion stuttered and he clapped a hand to his hip, but his face remained stoic and his sunglasses, improbably enough, remained on.

Chouji made another loop, and Shino tensed, but did not jump. And he was rewarded, as Chouji turned aside short of him and went off in another direction.

Naruto frowned. "Why'd he do that? He had him. Shino wasn't going to dodge." He turned to Kiba and Hinata. "Do you know why?"

Kiba shook his head, but Sasuke spoke from beside him, analytical. "The wall," he explained, staring at Shino's position. "If Chouji came in from that angle and Shino dodged him, he'd get stuck in the wall and lose most of his advantage. Shino's bugs can't stick to him in that state, but if he was held still they could. But look!"

Chouji's last loop had brought him around in a circle, and now he came at Shino parallel to the wall. Shino jumped sideways, but his hip apparently hindered the dodge, and the rolling juggernaut that was Chouji ran over one foot.

Shino fell to his side, yanking the injured appendage up to his chest. He moved as quickly as he could, but the foot would apparently not take his weight. Instead, he crawled the few feet remaining to the wall and used it to pull himself up, leaning on it.

Sasuke shook his head. "It's over. Shino can't dodge anymore."

There was general agreement with this, but Hinata, whose eyes were ridged with veins, shook her head. "Shino will win," she said, quite confidently. A small, knowing grin hovered on her lips.

"How do you figure that?" asked Naruto, rather dubiously. She only gestured at the fight.

"Watch."

Chouji had come around again, taking the smallest loop possible, and drove straight toward Shino. Naruto watched in horrified fascination. It was true, on that course Chouji would run straight into the wall—but with Shino unable to dodge, he would be pulped between them, the irresistible force and the immovable object. Let alone trying to win—the Aburame would be lucky to survive.

As Shino was leaning against the wall, there was no discernible interval between Chouji's hitting him and his plowing halfway through the wall with a splintering crunch. There he stopped, the great ball of his form more grotesque than intimidating now that it was still, half in and half out of a jagged hole in the arena wall, broken stones littering the ground around him. There was no sign of Shino at all.

Then a strange hazy cloak crept out around the edges of the break in the wall, as if a monstrous quantity of ink was flowing around Chouji, sticking to him. Naruto stared, momentarily confused, until his mind made the connection and he suddenly shuddered: those were bugs, the Aburame clan kikai, and Chouji was absolutely covered in them. At that moment, the great ball shuddered, as if trying to throw off the infestation, but to no avail. The swarm of bugs kept creeping over him, covering more and more of him, and Chouji's motions were becoming weaker as his chakra was drained by the insects.

At length, he shuddered more violently and seemed to collapse and disappear. The kikai that had covered him scattered momentarily, only to reconverge on the now normally proportioned Chouji, covering him as if as a blanket. Then movement near the other end of the room drew the eyes of the spectators, and Shino, his leg apparently uninjured, stepped out from behind the hand statue and walked toward his opponent. He had a slight limp, seemingly from the first injury to his hip, but the damage from Chouji crushing his foot was gone as if it had never happened.

Chouji stared up at him as he reached him and stood over him, a baffled look on his face. Shino stared down at him.

"Will you surrender?"

Chouji nodded hastily. "I surrender! I've got no chakra left. Could you..." He shifted uneasily, the motion difficult to see under his blanket of bugs.

Shino gave no visible signal, but the insects suddenly boiled off Chouji into the air. Shino took his hands out of his pockets and presented them, and the kikai disappeared up his sleeves. Naruto decided not to think about where they were going. They disappeared quickly, and Shino took a step forward and offered Chouji his hand up. Chouji took it readily, leaning on Shino visibly, and when he reached his feet, shuddering, his face was fatigued.

Cough. "The victory, by surrender, goes to Aburame Shino." Cough. The examiner stepped forward from where he had stood on the arena floor throughout the match, not moving except to avoid Chouji's path. "Contestants, please clear the arena." Cough. "The next match will be decided momentarily."

Shino and Chouji moved to the stairway, Shino limping, Chouji moving as if he'd just run three times around the village wall. It understandably took them a moment to reach the top, and when Shino reached his team he leaned back against the wall, instead of standing straight as a rod. Chouji, of course, collapsed against the railing panting, but this was not nearly so uncharacteristic a reaction.

Naruto turned to Shino. "How did you do that? You were over there and then you were somewhere else and Chouji was getting bugged!"

Shino turned to look at him, giving Naruto the unmistakable sense that he was being Regarded. "The technique is called mushi bunshin," he said, tersely. Naruto frowned.

"Bug clone? A clone...made of bugs? That's...really cool, actually. Though, I'm going to regret asking this, but how do you fit enough bugs to make a copy of you inside your body?"

Shino's stare took on a mildly frosty quality. "I do not believe you would appreciate the answer, nor am I particularly inclined to provide it."

Naruto stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. "Right. What's the next match?"

He turned to the board, which was flashing names again. It slowed, stopped.
    
    
      
                 Rock Lee 
                      vs. 
                 Uchiha Sasuke
    
    

Naruto stared at it for a moment, then turned to Sasuke with a half-commiserating laugh. Sasuke was staring at the board, transfixed. When he looked away, he wore an expression that looked as if it couldn't decide whether to be a grin or a wince.

From the balcony a distance away, there came an echoing cry of "YOSH!"

* * *

Sasuke, still shaking his head in mild chagrin, made his way along the balcony to the stairs, Lee several paces behind him. As he walked, his hands slipped in and out of his pockets and holsters, counting his supplies. Smoke bombs, explosive notes, kunai, shuriken, check. Naruto's chakra tags—he counted them with his fingers, and found that he had plenty. Good. This was going to be a hard fight—having access to unlimited shunshins, or shadow clones, would help immensely.

As he reached the arena floor, he glanced at Lee, who was grinning fit to split his skull open. As they took up their positions opposite each other, Lee extended a hand in a thumbs up, making a truly ridiculous pose.

"Yosh! Uchiha Sasuke! It has not been so long since our last match, but I hope that you have thought on the ways by which you might fan the flames of your youth!"

Sasuke stared at him, baffled, and the examiner gave him a nonplussed look. "Uh, that's great, you can start now."

Sasuke channeled chakra to his eyes, and the world slowed, as if immersed in clear syrup. He took up his stance, the motions slow and flowing in his sight, easy to make precise. To unaugmented sight, it would have seemed jaggedly snakelike, a sudden snap of motion stopping in precisely the right place. He had glanced in a mirror the third night of their stay at the tower, and noticed that now two tomoe spun in his eyes when he let them see; it had not taken him long to connect it to the moment in the fight against Orochimaru when he had _seen_ , a moment of epiphany indescribable to anyone who had not experienced it.

_At least one thing the snake-bastard gave me, all unintentional._

Lee had taken up his own eccentric stance, still grinning. "Are you ready, Uchiha Sasuke?"

He felt his lips curl in a smirk. He knew that Lee was faster than his body, though not faster than his eyes, yet the feeling of invincibility was still profound. He would win. Let all other things drop to the side—he would win. That was no judgment on Lee. He would win against anyone.

"I am ready," he said.

Lee, improbably, grinned even more broadly, and launched at him in one of his trademark attacks—no subtlety there, all speed, but he did not need subtlety really, not against anyone who wasn't—well, an Uchiha. Or perhaps a Hyuuga, Sasuke admitted grudgingly. This flashed through his mind in the instant as he saw Lee advance, and then he responded.

The Grand Fireball, trademark of the Uchiha clan, in the right hands an army-killer, he could do in three seals. The more basic Fire Breath—less efficient, less powerful, less useful, but a far simpler technique—he had gotten sealless on his tenth birthday. Without even the pause to run through seals that he might or might not have completed, Sasuke inhaled sharply and blew flame at the incoming Lee. He had all the time in the world to watch Lee's expression turn to surprise and his charge halt. Predictably enough, Lee backpedaled in time to avoid the attack completely, but his own strike had been averted.

Lee frowned, circled around a bit, and attempted another rush. Sasuke, who had pivoted to face him, simply used the same technique again, and Lee broke off, his face thoughtful. He had probably seen the relatively pathetic intensity of the fire.

Sure enough, when he attacked next there was a look of determination in his face, and—Sasuke narrowed his eyes and _looked_ —his motions were not those of one preparing to quickly abort, but of one tensing themselves to take pain. This time, as Lee closed on him, Sasuke flicked through the three seals and threw his chakra into the more powerful technique.

Lee, as anticipated, charged straight through it. Sasuke heard a cut-off yelp, and grinned slightly, before a boulder thrown by a giant hit him in the jaw and threw him backwards. As best he could estimate, he flew some fifteen feet before crashing to the ground. The Sharingan minimized his dazedness, but it was still almost a full second before he began to struggle to his feet.

Lee was standing in his stance, defiant as ever, but he was breathing heavily, and his green jumpsuit was charred ragged. Perhaps most amusingly, his huge eyebrows had been burned straight off his face, and his forehead looked oddly naked without them. The usual sheen of his black hair had been replaced by a dull, burned look. He was frowning determinedly, and as he saw Sasuke stand and rub his jaw, he straightened himself and sketched a brief bow.

"You are a powerful opponent, Uchiha Sasuke! But I have not yet finished! Prepare!"

He brought his hands together in a strange position, like a flat clap just at the level of his chest, and closed his eyes. With the power of the second tomoe, Sasuke saw the chakra flow around him—oddly subdued compared to that of most shinobi—suddenly rile and become chaotic, as it increased by several fold. "Kaimon: Kai!"

Sasuke knew what to expect from here, and he was not at all looking forward to experiencing it again. As Lee prepared himself, Sasuke was already bringing his hands together in a ram seal; as Lee began to move, the rush seeming slow to the Sharingan but far faster than he could hope to dodge, he focused his chakra and poured it into _being elsewhere_. There was a rush, whose duration was impossible to calculate, and he was some distance away from Lee, seeing his charge from behind. Lee, of course, saw his disappearance and immediately whirled, picking up on his new location remarkably quickly for someone without any sort of visual or mental aid. He charged at Sasuke again with the same speed. Sasuke's hands were still in the seal, yet Lee had still almost reached him by the time he could shunshin out again, to another location a bit further away. Lee whirled again, a look of frustration on his face, and at the next charge Sasuke evaded him with a bit more of a margin. It took three more dodges before Lee lost his energy, the strange currents in his chakra giving way back to its usual placid flow, and he turned to Sasuke, panting and twitching slightly at the motion, as if it pained him.

Sasuke, letting himself relax, felt the drain hit him as his body realized that he had just used a fairly chakra-intensive move six times in a row. He staggered just slightly, and stared warily at Lee, wondering what else the boy could pull out. Lee, apparently seeing his concentrated facade breaking, gave him a slow nod, his expression turning from budding resentment to guarded respect.

"You are indeed powerful," he said, slowly. "I do not know if I can defeat you as I am. I cannot use the First Gate too often, or I will tear myself apart."

Sasuke raised his eyebrows and shook his head. "Bit dangerous, that sounds," he said. "Of course, it's probably more dangerous to your opponents than to you, which was probably the point."

Lee did not respond to the mild humor, but nodded seriously. "And yet you have countered it."

Sasuke shrugged, but did not answer.

It occurred to him to glance up at the railing where the spectators waited, and his face twitched in amusement. Most of the faces there were utterly bemused. Understandable enough, given that to those without eyes or gates to call upon, there had just been a blur of Sasuke flicking about and Lee moving too fast for the eye to see.

His eye was caught by Lee's sensei as the seeming older clone of the odd boy raised his hands to his mouth.

"Lee! Take them off!"

Lee spun to look up at him, uncertain. "Are you sure, sensei? You have told me to only—"

The older man nodded vigorously. "I am quite sure! Lee! It is time to show the flames of your youth for all to see!"

Sasuke mentally rolled his eyes at the verbiage, but in all appearance Lee was about to do something else astonishing, and he had had his fill of underestimating the marginally-insane genin the first time he had used Kaimon on him. His eyes narrowed as Lee made a single jump, quite a bit farther than he could have done, to the top of that ridiculous statue of a pair of hands. There he appeared to be fiddling with the orange leg-warmers around his calves. Sasuke watched as Lee removed a couple of studded metal belts from his legs, standing up with an air of sudden ease. Then he frowned, suddenly analytical, as he recognized them.

_Training weights? He's very fast already—who is this guy? How much of an advantage will dropping them give him?_

Then Lee dropped the weights to the ground, and Sasuke could only gape as they fell through the air and smashed through several layers of tiles with a deafening noise and a sudden, prodigious explosion of dust. The weights had to have been at least a hundred pounds apiece. _What the hell?_

Then Lee launched himself at him, and all such worries were abruptly pushed aside. He was at least twice as fast now as he had been even in his Kaimon state, and watching him drive towards him brought with it a unique and horrible fatalism that Sasuke had felt only once before, seeing needles come at him too quickly for him to move. There was no chance that Sasuke would be able to dodge before Lee reached him and at the least knocked him out in that one blow; his hands were by his sides, so he could not even make the seal for a shunshin. He needed to move—he needed speed—

In desperation, he stared at Lee, and _saw_ him, and let the instincts of the Sharingan carry him in imitation. He duplicated the motions of Lee's legs, and felt his legs _move_ , and throw him aside, faster than he had ever moved outside a shunshin. Unable to control the motion for longer than a second, he let the imitation lapse, and collapsed in an undignified heap. But as he fell, he watched Lee pass straight through the space where he had been—a clean miss.

Sasuke momentarily debated the idea of getting up, but rejected it; with that speed, Lee would catch him in the middle of the operation. _Need to buy time._ As Lee reached the other side of the room and began to turn around, Sasuke grabbed a smoke bomb from the pouch at his belt and dropped it. The choking smoke billowed up quickly, filling the area around him. Sasuke mentally crossed his fingers.

_Come on, just give me three seconds while you're still thinking about it...._

As if on autopilot, his hand reached into the holster on his left thigh where he kept Naruto's chakra tags, and slapped one against his arm. A familiar rush came over him, a feeling of great power flowing through his chakra coils. This time, it was almost painful. _I must not be so drained now as I was last time._ Not wasting any time, Sasuke crossed his hands and forced a shadow clone technique, and though he could not see the clones in the smoke he saw their chakra signatures suddenly appear, two of them. The feeling of being stretched to overfilling abated as he dumped the excess chakra into the clones. Then he made a ram seal and _concentrated_ , going on his memory of the arena since he could not see it. He rematerialized behind the statue that Lee had stood on to remove his weights. The second clone did the same, but appeared on the ceiling in an out-of-the-way corner of the room and hung there. The third remained where it was, duplicating the sprawled pose Sasuke had fallen in.

Sasuke could just barely see Lee where he stood at the other end of the room. He was staring at the cloud of smoke where Sasuke had just been, and as Sasuke watched from cover, he charged into it with that same incredible speed. He appeared on the other side just afterwards, as if he had not touched anything, and the lack of a memory dump from his clone told him that it still survived.

Sasuke tried to crawl behind the statue and stand up. The first part of the exercise worked as planned, but when he tried to stand he became aware of a growing, pervasive burn in his legs, like what he felt when he sprinted his fastest for longer than he should have, but several times worse. They could barely hold his weight—he could drag himself up along the back side of the statue and lean on it, but walking would be a slow and painful endeavor, let alone having any hope of dodging Lee. He gritted his teeth as he remembered his frantic dodge.

_Note to self: using the Sharingan to imitate things your muscles can't actually do is a one-way route to severe pain. Don't do it._

He pushed off from the statue and took a step forward, hissing at the pain. Determining this to be a bit more adventurous than he really wanted to be at the moment, he quickly leaned back against the rear of the statue.

At that moment, a burst of memory washed over him. The clone he had left in the cloud of smoke—dispersing somewhat now, though still heavy—had evaded Lee for several passes of his charge, until the boy had become frustrated and simply run in tight circles all around the occluded area. Sasuke gritted his teeth, but decided—he needed to see. He took several steps, gasping and still leaning on the statue, until he could see around it to where Lee stood.

The boy was glancing around the room warily, though he did not seem to be near discovering either Sasuke or his clone up in the corner. His chakra flow was entirely normal, which was worrying. The Kaimon was apparently a state which he could only sustain for a short period of time, but simply being without his weights would not have any such limitation.

Sasuke caught the eye of his clone and gestured it to attract Lee's attention. It nodded, and shunshinned down to the ground. Lee's glance jumped to it immediately, and he charged.

What followed was a quick, intricate game of shunshin-tag, much closer than the earlier round. The clone was making its jumps as long as it could, and still each time Lee was within ten feet of it before it could shunshin out again. Sasuke knew that the game could not last forever—the clone did not have the chakra, and anyway it would inevitably make a mistake eventually. The Sharingan was powerful, but (Sasuke grudgingly admitted) it could not close a gap in physical speed so overwhelming as that between him and Lee.

Between the clone's jumps, he caught its eye—easy enough, since it had the Sharingan as well—and indicated the floor at the center of the arena, making quick field communication signs. _End it there._ The clone did not sign back, needing to keep its hands in the ram seal to play shunshin tag properly, but he felt confident it had gotten the message.

Sasuke himself did a shunshin up to the top of the statue, the slight strain of landing from it making his legs twinge. He ignored it, but began preparing for his next move.

A moment later, his clone appeared in the center of the arena, and when Lee came after it yet again it did not shunshin away again. Lee's fist passed straight through its jaw, dispersing it, and Sasuke winced at the influx of memories. The clones, made after he had done it, had the same problem with their legs that he had, and that clone had been doing constant shunshins—not the activity that put the most strain on one's legs, but still painful.

Lee had stopped for just a moment at the clone's dispersal, confused, and that was what Sasuke was waiting for. In a single motion, he flung a spread of eight shuriken at him, four from each hand.

While they were still in flight, Lee found him atop the statue, and charged straight toward him, great impatience in his face.

Sasuke grinned around his mouthful of wires and, keeping a close eye on the shuriken, played his fingers through the wires just so. He steered them precisely—half striking Lee, the other half curving around him, their momentum whipping them around and wrapping him in wires.

As Lee, now dismayed and hindered by the wires about him, made to finish his charge, Sasuke mustered all his willpower to force his protesting legs to obey. He took one step to the side and let Lee pass by him, and then, playing the wires' lengths, he whipped the other genin around on the ends of the eight wires that bound them together and sent him careening toward the floor. As the wires reached their limit, he let them all go entirely, and let Lee slam into the floor of his own momentum. Sasuke saw him attempt to right himself, but his reflexes at speed were apparently hampered by the wires that bound him. He landed flat on his back, momentarily winded.

Sasuke clapped his hands together in the ram seal and appeared next to Lee. He had a kunai in his hand the next moment, and just as Lee began to struggle against the wires that bound him—wires that could not hold him, with his strength, for more than a second—Sasuke tucked forward and slammed straight down into the older boy, elbow leading. The move apparently did not faze Lee at all, but in the same motion Sasuke laid the kunai against his throat.

"Surrender," he whispered, an unavoidable exultation creeping into his voice.

Lee froze just momentarily, then, carefully not moving his neck in any way, he raised his voice. "Examiner! I surrender."

Sasuke let out a relieved breath and removed the knife. He tried to stand, but his much-abused legs simply refused; with a resigned sigh, he rolled off of Lee and sat up.

The examiner had himself retreated to one of the corners of the room; now he took several steps forward, at first mildly hesitant, then gaining confidence.

Cough. "The winner, by surrender, is Uchiha Sasuke." Cough.

Sasuke craned his neck around to look at the balcony. Naruto stood there, his mouth open, staring at him fixedly. Sasuke laughed tiredly as he recovered himself and cheered loudly.

Lee had stood, and was looking at Sasuke with mild concern. "Ah, Uchiha-san? Are your legs hurt?"

Sasuke nodded. "Yeah...you saw when I dodged you, that first time after you took off the weights?"

Lee nodded. "It was quite surprising. I had thought I had caught you."

"I used the Sharingan to imitate how fast you were moving, just to get out of the way. It turns out that's not a good idea if you're not actually that fast."

Lee's eyes widened, and he nodded. Then a grin grew on his face. "Ah! It is proven that the genius of hard work will surpass even such a powerful kekkei genkai! Yosh!" He pumped a fist near his face and grinned brightly, but the effect was ruined by his lack of eyebrows.

Sasuke could only shake his head and laugh wearily. Lee recovered himself quickly. "Ah, but I have forgotten myself! Uchiha-san, allow me to assist you to your team!" He reached down and offered a hand. Sasuke took it, and let Lee bear most of his weight as he stood. When he tried to catch his balance, though, his legs gave out and he fell backward again with a hiss.

Lee looked dreadfully apologetic. "Oh! I apologize, Uchiha-san! I did not realize the extent of your injuries!" He seemed perfectly prepared to carry Sasuke up the stairs, but Sasuke hastily waved him off.

"No problem, Lee. I'll just..." He maneuvered himself to a sitting position, then put his hands in the by now very familiar ram seal and concentrated again. The shunshin found him sitting on the balcony just behind Naruto and Sakura.

Kakashi, who was standing beside them, turned to look at him. "Run into a limitation of the Sharingan, did you?"

Sasuke nodded. "So it would appear, from the parlous state of my legs. Is this likely to be serious?"

Kakashi shook his head. "No, it's just like ordinary muscular strain time twenty. Kind of like the injuries Lee gets if he overuses the gates, really, except worse because the Sharingan isn't overpowering your muscles, it's just demanding impossibilities out of them at your current level of power. But we really should get you to a medic."

Sasuke protested weakly. "I would prefer to see the other matches."

Kakashi shook his head. "You'll survive. You're in the finals now, so you don't have to be here any more."

Sasuke glanced at Naruto. "All right. Sorry I won't get to see your match, Naruto. Sakura." The latter name was added on almost as an afterthought, but Sakura jumped and then smiled shyly at him.

Kakashi smiled under his mask. "Right! I'll take you there, Sasuke, since you can't move on your own. All up!" He hoisted Sasuke up by the waist, holding him over one shoulder. Sasuke bore it stoically as ever, but his face twitched at the humiliation. Kakashi glanced back to grin at Naruto and Sakura, then disappeared in a shunshin of his own.

* * *

Naruto stared after Sasuke for almost thirty seconds after he disappeared. "That was really astounding," he said, his voice at first hushed. "No, I take it back. That was the coolest thing I have ever seen."

Sakura chuckled lightly from beside him. "Really?"

Naruto nodded vigorously. "Really! He out-speeded Bushy Brow! I didn't think that was possible! And Bushy Brow wears, like, hundred-pound weights all the time and he's still that fast! It's insane!"

Sakura shrugged. "He was using shunshin. Lee is really quite a lot faster than he is. The Sharingan, though...it's amazing." Her voice, when she finished, was quiet.

Naruto made a face. "It's annoying is what it is. I now share with Lee the experience of having a guy just beat the crap out of you even though you're way stronger and faster than he is. It's like fighting a weasel."

Sakura laughed softly. "And aren't you glad you have him on your side?"

"Sure! But it's still annoying." He stared down at the arena floor, waiting for the screen to show the next matches, and winced. "Wow, the floor is taking some bad hits today. First Chouji, and now those weights of Lee's...I wonder if they give fixing this place out as a D-rank?"

Sakura shrugged. "Probably."

At this point the screen above reactivated, and Naruto stared at it avidly as it slowed and stopped.
    
    
      
              Nara Shikamaru 
                      vs. 
                Akado Yoroi
    
    

There was a groan from nearby, on the other side of Hinata's team. "Troublesome...." Shikamaru planted his chin on the railing and stared down at the arena.

Ino, his teammate, then grabbed him by the shoulder and bodily yanked him back from the railing. She tried to lift him up to a standing position, but failed; instead, she stood over him as he lay on his back and began to harangue him. "Shikamaru, you get down there! You're going to make our team look bad!"

Chouji, who had sat down and was, predictably enough, eating a bag of chips, turned his head to look. "Come on, Shika. One of us has to win, it'll probably be you."

Shikamaru sighed. "I'm going, I'm going...troublesome." He stood up, slowly, and slouched his way along the balcony toward the stairs.

Naruto watched as Shikamaru, who seemed to have woken up slightly, faced off against one of Kabuto's teammates, who with his sunglasses and the cloth over his face was almost as obscured as Kakashi. He was obviously less than impressed.

"You sure you want to do this, brat?" he said. "You don't have a chance. Just give up now and save yourself the pain."

"Tempting," muttered Shikamaru. "But no, Ino would kill me. Let's get it over with."

The older Leaf-nin scowled. "Fucking brats," he muttered. "Think because you've got a fancy clan you're any good? I'll put you in the hospital for a month!"

Around then, the examiner called the start. Yoroi charged forward, bringing one hand up as if to grab onto Shikamaru's face, and an odd blue glow flickered around it. Shikamaru, meanwhile, had made a single seal, and his shadow reached out to the charging opponent and latched onto him. He froze, still several paces away.

His face was not visible, but there was panic in his voice. "Hey! You brat! What's your game?"

Shikamaru looked bored. "Troublesome. You knew I was a Nara, and you still just charged at me? Idiot." He released the rat seal he was holding and let his arms fall to his sides, and Yoroi mimicked the motion. Then, watching his opponent carefully, he moved one hand to his waist and fiddled it around. Naruto was confused, until he saw Yoroi's identical movement: he had a holster for something where Shikamaru was fumbling. Shikamaru's waist was bare, and Naruto suddenly realized why all his holsters were in the small of his back, somewhere no one else ever kept anything.

Shikamaru's careful manipulations had paid off; he lifted his hand, and Yoroi's followed along, holding a kunai. Shikamaru mimed holding a fist near his neck, and the blade of the kunai Yoroi was holding sat at his throat.

"You want to surrender?" Shikamaru said hopefully.

Yoroi looked frightened, then defiant. "No," he spat. "You wouldn't have the stomach to kill me."

Shikamaru sighed. "Troublesome." He let his hand drop, and the knife left Yoroi's throat. "You're right, I don't particularly want to kill a fellow Leaf-nin."

Yoroi laughed, a sneer in his voice. "Hah! Brat. You don't have the stomach to be a shinobi!" Naruto wondered absently how stupid he was.

Shikamaru sighed. "You're the most troublesome person I've dealt with all day." He made a seemingly pointless movement with his left hand, and Yoroi mimicked it, a kind of tossing motion. The kunai in his hand spun once in midair, and Shikamaru-controlling-Yoroi caught it, this time backhand, with the blade sticking out behind. Yoroi could only watch as his hands moved, sticking out one finger of his left hand and slipping the ring of the kunai in his right over it, as if he were about to attempt one of the more-fancy-than-useful moves involving spinning it around his hand.

Shikamaru's face still wore that identical bored look. "Surrender, or I'll break your finger."

What could be seen of Yoroi's face paled slightly, and a quaver was audible in his voice as he replied. "N-no! You're just a brat—you wouldn't—"

Shikamaru twisted his hand sharply. Yoroi screamed, cut himself off, then screamed again more loudly as Shikamaru yanked the ring of the kunai off his broken finger without much concern for its comfort. He instead moved it on to the next finger on the same hand. Naruto, seeing Shikamaru's hands, was struck with the sudden, inappropriate urge to laugh; Shikamaru might have been making an obscene gesture.

"You want to surrender?" asked Shikamaru.

Yoroi glared at him, breathing heavily, a bit of a catch in every breath. "No. Brat."

Without any more ceremony than that, Shikamaru broke his middle finger. Then the same routine of switching fingers. Yoroi's breath was ragged as he stared Shikamaru down; Shikamaru's expression had not changed as he again demanded Yoroi's surrender.

Yoroi shook his head convulsively. Crack. Scream. Shikamaru was in the process of moving the kunai to the next finger when Yoroi broke.

"No! I surrender! I s-surrender!" As he got the last word out, his voice broke. Shikamaru glanced at the examiner, who was staring at him with a mildly horrified look. Under Shikamaru's gaze, he hastily cleared his throat.

"Ah—winner, by surrender, is Nara Shikamaru!"

Shikamaru's shadow returned to its usual duty opposite him from any light sources. Yoroi's hands, previously held up in front of him, fell to his sides, and the kunai dropped from nerveless fingers. Slowly, he brought his left hand up in front of his face and stared at it, the three fingers that were broken dangling sickly to one side or the other.

Shikamaru had already turned, placed his hands back in his pockets, and started ambling back to the stairs when Yoroi broke. He snarled as he retrieved the implement of his torture from the ground and charged at Shikamaru's back.

"You BASTARD!" he shouted as he approached. Shikamaru had half turned, the expression on his face only of mild interest, as the exam proctor suddenly appeared between them, caught Yoroi's wrist, and in a single graceful motion threw him over his shoulder to land flat on the ground.

Shikamaru turned back toward the stairs. "Troublesome idiot," he said, almost under his breath, as he reached the staircase.

When he rejoined his team, he immediately sat down against the wall and closed his eyes. Ino was speechless for a moment. Then her voice reasserted itself.

"Hey! Shikamaru! What the heck do you call that?"

Shikamaru opened one eye. "I call it a fight. Well, not much of one."

Ino scowled at him. "Idiot! You know what I mean!"

"Hey, I won, didn't I? I don't know what you're complaining about. Troublesome woman." He closed his eye again with finality. Chouji, who had been staring at him as well, shrugged and went back to his chips.

The examiner had been a little slower in restarting the screen in its randomness this time. Naruto took the opportunity to walk over to where Shikamaru was trying to sleep.

"Wow, Shikamaru, that was kind of impressive but really really creepy."

Shikamaru opened his eyes to glance up at him, then closed them again. "I'm glad you think so, Naruto, but could you please let me sleep?"

"You need to sleep? What's with you and sleeping?"

"That move takes up a lot of chakra. I need to recharge."

Naruto sighed. "So what's your excuse every other hour of the day?"

"I don't sleep all the time. Sometimes I watch clouds."

Naruto sighed and went back to stand beside Sakura. Above them, the board was spinning again.
    
    
      
               Tsurugi Misumi 
                      vs. 
                   Gaara
    
    

Naruto shivered involuntarily, seeing the emotionless Suna redhead simply appear in position by the examiner in a swirl of sand. It looked like a simple, if sealless, shunshin, but with the boy's affinity for sand...who knew? His opponent, Kabuto's other teammate, took the more conventional way down.

As they faced each other, Misumi attempted some of the standard taunts. Gaara was completely unresponsive, and Misumi trailed off, looking disconcerted. Then the examiner called the start.

Misumi lunged forward, doing something strange to his arms, trying to grapple with Gaara. Gaara did not respond in the slightest. Instead, sand rushed out of the gourd on his back with snakelike speed, blocking Misumi's attack easily.

Misumi stumbled backward, staring, then attempted to circle around and lunged again. The sand appeared in his path just as before, and it did not even move to counter his attack, but simply formed a wall. Misumi tumbled back, swearing.

Then Gaara reached out a hand, and the sand exploded forward toward him. Misumi's eyes widened as it reached him, and in a desperate maneuver he lunged backward, but to no avail. The sand quickly wrapped him up entirely, only his head protruding.

"Sabaku sousou."

The quietly spoken words echoed around the arena as the sand crushed inward, then flowed back to the gourd on Gaara's back, leaving behind a crushed red ruin of a body.

The examiner was staring at him in unbridled shock and horror, but Gaara ignored it. He simply stared at him, waiting for the victory to be pronounced.

Then there was a gasp, as Misumi moved. And more than moved—stood up.

"What do you know," he said, his voice a muffled rasp. "Looks like this technique is good for one more thing. Not like it'll help me in the long run, but..." His bloody shoulders moved in a parody of a shrug. "I'm going to kill you."

He lunged forward again, grisly, dripping blood, and Naruto spared a moment to wonder if he really had no other tricks. Gaara's face had actually changed expression at seeing the Leaf-nin stand; his eyes had widened, and his lips curled back from his teeth.

Without paying any attention to the shock of everyone else in the room, he thrust his hand forward again. This time, the sand wrapped around Misumi's arm, and ripped it from his body, casting it aside to make a bloody stain on the floor. Then his other arm, and both his legs. Finally, the sand tore Misumi's head from his body, and, wrapping around it, crushed it to a dripping pulp.

The examiner was staring at Gaara with fear and hatred, and his hand had moved, seemingly instinctively, to the hilt of his sword. With an effort, he removed it, still glaring at the boy.

"The winner, by battle to the death, is Gaara."

Gaara did not acknowledge him, but disappeared back to the balcony near his team in another of those sand shunshins. His teammates, as if by mutual accord, edged apart, staring at him warily.

Naruto ground his teeth at the display. True, he hadn't know Tsurugi Misumi in the slightest, but he was still a Leaf-nin. Shikamaru had been moderately brutal, but that was expected of a shinobi, and he was no worse than Sasuke with his fireballs—or, really, himself with his explosions. But that...that slaughter...

He heard a noise beside him, and saw Hinata staring at the blood on the ground, her hands locked on the railing, trembling. He hesitated for a moment.

"Hinata-chan?"

She did not respond, but kept staring at the arena, her fingers turning white, her breath beginning to speed up. After a moment's debate with himself, he put one hand on her shoulder, and laid the other across her eyes.

She tensed up—more, anyway—at the touch, then, recognizing him, relaxed marginally, and leaned into him. Naruto turned toward her as she moved her hands from the railing to his shirt, clenching handfuls of the fabric in her fists as she buried her face in his chest. Naruto awkwardly put a hand around her back and gently patted it. He could not think of anything to say, but that did not seem required; she was breathing heavily, still, but more slowly, and her trembling slowed. After only a few moments, she pulled away for a moment to quickly wipe tears out of her eyes with one hand. Then she leaned back against him, and her breath warmed his shoulder. It was a bit of an awkward position, but it felt right.

There was not much more time. The screen had already begun to light up for the next match when she pulled away again, looking down.

"Th-thank you, Naruto-kun," she said, even more quietly than usual. Naruto nodded, uncertainly, and struck by a sudden impulse wrapped one arm around her back and gave her a squeeze.

"Any time," he said, his own voice mildly ragged. He stared across the arena at Gaara, suddenly very glad that he was on a separate balcony across a large room.

There was the soft sound of the match selector finishing its roll, and he glanced absently up at it. Before he could read it, though, he heard Hinata gasp out loud and felt her hands clench again in his shirt. He stared at the board with its lit names, unsure of the significance, but knew that Hinata seemed to think it terrifying.
    
    
      
               Hyuuga Hinata 
                      vs. 
                Hyuuga Neji
    
    


	15. Contests: Personal


      
                Hyuuga Hinata 
                      vs. 
                Hyuuga Neji
    
    

Hinata had attached herself to Naruto again, trembling. Naruto put one arm around her shoulders, a little more naturally this time, as he glanced around. Hyuuga Neji...the only other Hyuuga in the competition was the older boy on Lee's team. Naruto turned as best he could to look at the other boy, only to see him already staring his his direction, a venomous glare on his face. Not intended for him, Naruto realized, but for Hinata. As Naruto watched, the boy apparently noticed Hinata's position, and his mouth tightened as he gave Naruto a contemptuous glance.

Naruto stared at the Hyuuga disdainfully, then pointedly looked away, at the arena floor. It was still stained with blood, but the Hokage had stood, his mouth a tight line, and made one seal. He held it as the earth under the floor seemed to turn itself over, burying the bloodstains—the pieces of Misumi's body had been carried off by a couple of medic-nin who Naruto would not have exchanged places with if someone had offered him the Hokage's hat then and there. The jutsu even repaired the damage done by Chouji's bouncing around and Lee's weights, though there remained a large hole in the wall from the first fight.

He turned back to Hinata, who seemed to have recovered herself, and was merely breathing heavily. "Hinata-chan? Who is this Neji guy?"

She pulled away, only slightly. "He is...my cousin. He was kind to me, but...since Hizashi-oji died he is...cold. He hates the main family, I think...."

Naruto sighed. He had only the vaguest idea of the Hyuuga family structure or what had happened when Hinata was three years old, but he knew that Hinata was of the main family. "Well, that's stupid. _You_ didn't do anything. Just go out there and kick his ass, Hinata-chan."

Hinata smiled weakly, but shook her head. "I...he is much stronger than me, Naruto-kun. He is considered the genius of the Hyuuga family. So strong...they are saying that if he had not been born branch, he would be the strongest clan head since the village was founded. I could never beat him."

Naruto was about to rejoin with an enthusiastic defense that sufficient determination could beat anyone, but paused. That certainly had not seemed to help against the snake-bastard...Orochimaru. A tinge of bitterness flavored his smile.

"Well, all you can do is your best. I think you'll do fine. You're plenty strong yourself, Hinata-chan."

It was at this point that Neji stalked by them, not looking at either, on his way to the stairs down. Hinata seemed to shrink as he passed by, and Naruto squeezed her shoulder.

"Go ahead. It'll be all right."

Hinata nodded hesitantly and walked off down the balcony. A moment later she stood across from Neji on the newly repaired arena floor. The proctor, standing between them, called the match start and retired several steps as usual.

Neji had taken up a familiar stance, his eyes flaring as the veins around them bulged out. Naruto watched Hinata take up the same stance, but her movements were hesitant.

"You are unlucky, Hinata-sama," said Neji, his voice flat, cold. "Had you found yourself matched against another opponent you might even have defeated them. As it is your weakness must be made clear to all."

Hinata's stance faltered. "Neji-nii-san..." she said, almost inaudibly.

His face hardened further, if that was possible. "There is no point to this contest. You are weak, as it is your fate to be weak. I am strong, as it is my fate to be strong. The outcome is foreordained."

"I...I did not want...."

"This is pointless, Hinata-sama," said Neji. Every time he used the honorific, his voice flattened, putting a little barb into the pronunciation. "You should simply resign. Save yourself pain. Perhaps, in some future Exam, you will make it further—though I doubt it."

Hinata shook her head slightly, desperately. "No...."

Naruto had heard enough. He leaned far over the balcony, glaring at Neji.

"Hey! Asshole! Enough with your stupid mind games! Kick his ass, Hinata!"

It seemed that Hinata might have stood a little straighter, looked a little surer, but Neji chose that moment to lace into her again. "This is unseemly, Hinata-sama. It is contemptible enough that the heiress of Hyuuga is a weakling, but such associates are laughable. Better to simply be weak than to lean on those as weak as yourself."

This was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Hinata's head snapped up, and her eyes flashed into full activation as she glared back at Neji. "No! Naruto-kun is not weak!" she said, her voice rising.

Neji snorted contemptuously. "He is a clanless orphan. If he can defeat you, that only reflects your own shameful weakness. He cannot surpass the Hyuuga. It is his fate."

"No...that's not true! It's not...there's not...you're wrong!" With that, Hinata jumped forward at Neji, chakra gathering around her hand, and slashed it forward. Neji responded in kind, their hands clashing with a flash of blue. The next attack came from Neji, and Hinata blocked it aside in a similar flash before twisting aside and attacking Neji's right.

That was when Naruto stopped trying to follow the fight closely, and simply watched, open-mouthed. The clash of two jyuuken users was entirely different from Hinata's fighting him. Where he would be forced to dodge frantically to avoid the spikes of chakra in the blows, the two Hyuuga blocked freely, countering with their own chakra control. The moves interlocked, almost like a dance, as if both were executing forms well-practiced against each other. Naruto realized with a jerk that they most likely were—who else would the Hyuuga practice against but the Hyuuga?

There was a worry, though. Never even when they practiced in their imitation of full combat had Hinata's strikes been shrouded in visible chakra as they were now. Much though he suspected she was holding back to avoid injuring him, the strikes she did use were more than sufficient to temporarily incapacitate. What kind of damage could these glowing palms do when they hit?

The subtleties of the dueling jyuuken were beyond him, but Hinata seemed to be holding her own—or at least, holding up her end of the interlocked forms, which seemed not to involve any strikes ever touching home. Hinata's face was intent, her eyes flashing; Neji had lost all the scorn in his expression when the fight began, leaving it blank, masklike, betraying only concentration.

Then, something changed—the patterns of the fight, of stroke and counterstroke, disrupted themselves. Neji threw three strikes in quick succession, and the third struck just between Hinata's chest and stomach.

She was thrown backward, stumbling, her eyes wide. Three paces back, she regained her balance and bent over, her body tense, cradling her stomach as if in pain. Neji had straightened, his face sliding from blank concentration back to disdain.

"Do you understand now? You cannot defeat me. Surrender. If you continue to fight, I will not trouble myself to leave you alive."

Hinata straightened, still holding her stomach. A trickle of blood ran down her face from her mouth, but she smiled, almost disbelievingly.

"You missed...Neji-nii-san," she whispered. Her smile became fey. "I am...strong?"

Neji's eyes widened, and he frowned. "You dodged?"

Hinata took up her stance again, still smiling, and her Byakugan, which had disappeared when she was hit, snapped back into activation. "I am...strong...." she breathed. "I am not trapped by any fate...Neji-nii-san, you are not either. You could...try to be happy?" Her voice trembled again on that last, and Neji's lip curled in disgust.

"You think yourself strong, because you managed to dodge one blow? You are delusional. I will warn you once more, Hinata-sama. Surrender now, while you have some dignity. If I defeat you, you will have none."

Hinata shook her head. "No...I will show you. Neji-nii-san...you do not need this." She lunged forward again.

The momentum had shifted. It was not, anymore, a measured, rhythmic exchange of blows. Hinata attacked hard, recklessly, and Neji was no longer exchanging forms with her, but falling back, dodging those strikes which he did not block. His face had changed, from the blank concentration of the jyuuken forms to almost a snarl. And then, as Hinata struck out at him again, he moved in a burst of speed faster than either of them had moved so far, snaking around the blow and standing at Hinata's shoulder. For a seemingly endless moment, he stared at her, his teeth bared, then struck at her arm several times, two fingers extended on each hand. It was over in a flurry of motion, and then he had flipped back away from her counterblow and landed several paces away.

Hinata made as if to lunge after Neji again, but stumbled before she had taken a step. One arm dangled limply as she regained her balance, and she stared at Neji. He looked back at her with a face just as loftily disdainful as ever, as if she had never pressed him in the least.

Slowly, with a visible effort, Hinata raised her dangling arm, and pushed up her sleeve with her other hand. Small red dots covered it, the skin where they sat looking burned. Hinata stared at it, seeming to deflate. Neji, still watching, snorted.

"You're beaten. You can't use chakra in that arm anymore, and there's no way you can even put up a fight with only one arm. Are you still going to hurt yourself trying to continue?"

Hinata shook her head slowly. "I'm not...beaten. Not yet...."

Moving as if in a dream, she reached into a pouch at her belt and pulled out a handful of tags. Naruto thought at first she was going to try to force Neji away from her with explosives, until he recognized the items in question. His eyes widened.

"What's she trying to...Would she? No!"

His sudden horror did not affect Hinata. Holding out her injured arm, she laid a tag on the back of her hand, the empty circle of the fuinjutsu facing upward. Then, with two fingers on her still-operative hand, she activated it.

Her hand suddenly exploded in light. Enough chakra to replenish her reserves entirely was confined by her closed-off chakra network into only her left hand. Her face clenched in sudden pain as blue light bright enough to be mildly painful to look at flared around her hand and wrist. Then there was a quick series of smaller flares, as the light rushed up her forearm halfway to her elbow. There it stopped, the intensity of the light mildly dimming. The spots on her arm that had been burned red now glowed with a brighter light, like sunlight through holes in a cloth. But her face was still tight, and Naruto saw drops of blood falling from her arm.

Neji was speechless, staring at Hinata as if she had suddenly grown another head. Hinata ignored him. Her upper arm was still cut off, and the flickering mass of light in her hand and forearm had apparently reached stability. Slowly, Hinata yanked the spent tag off her hand, then replaced it with another.

Naruto gasped. "Hinata! No! You're going to really hurt yourself!"

She made no sign of having heard him, but activated the second tag. The light flashed again, more brightly this time, and there was another series of flickers as it forced its way up her arm through the tenketsu which had been closed. This time, the wave reached almost to her shoulder before it petered out.

Hinata was breathing heavily, by now, and she bit her lip hard enough to bleed slightly before applying the third tag.

Her arm flashed, all along its length. The few remaining barriers between her body and her arm fell almost too soon to notice, and Hinata screamed as the chakra in her arm surged out and scoured the entirety of her body. Glowing faintly still, she fell to her knees, a trickle of blood dripping off the fingers of her left hand.

Neji, still staring, shook his head as if to throw off his surprise. His voice, when he spoke, carried only a shadow of his previous disdain.

"What has this accomplished? You are now only injured even worse. Are you so determined to fight your fate that you will court your own death?"

Hinata looked up, and shakily stood. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, she fell into the jyuuken stance again, and all her trembling was gone.

"Now I can fight," she whispered. And without any further ado, she attacked again.

If before she had been reckless, now she was unstoppable. The first blow she unleashed Neji attempted to block and counter just as he had before. This time, the thin blue haze that still hovered around her poured itself into the strike, and Neji, shock in his face, snatched his blocking hand away. Two more strikes hit home before he could get away, and when he landed his arm was limp and he favored one leg.

The shock on his face turned to anger. As Hinata charged him again, he avoided her strikes entirely and appeared behind her, but she spun with astounding speed and knocked the blow he aimed at her back aside. He retreated again, and Hinata paused for a moment, panting, crouched in her stance. Her motions seemed strained, somehow, and blood was starting from the corner of one eye and running down her face, joining the trickle from her mouth.

Only a second later, she lunged after Neji again. He avoided her strikes and kept the range open, faster than Hinata even with his injured leg, as the anger in his face intensified.

"You think yourself strong?" he said quietly, between dodges. "Very well. It is only proper for me to enlighten you."

He let her close, dodging a flurry of blows, and then he was behind her again. As she spun to attack him, he dropped low, crouching on his good leg, and spun quickly around, his hands dropping to the ground to balance him, throwing a hard spinning sweep straight into Hinata's knee.

There was a sickening, cartilaginous crack, and Hinata collapsed with a scream. Naruto suddenly, convulsively grabbed at the railing, his teeth clenched, glaring at Neji; his grunt of tension fell into a sudden, loud silence.

Neji regained his feet and took several steps backward, looking down at Hinata. She had fallen forward, her right leg broken. The proctor stepped forward from where he had waited by the wall, staring intently at Hinata.

"Ah...the winner, by..."

"No!"

This was surprising to everyone. Hinata had gotten her hands under her, pushing herself up, staring at Neji.

"I...can still fight...." she said, gasping momentarily when an injudicious movement tweaked her leg. She laboriously pushed herself up to one knee, her broken leg splayed out awkwardly ahead of her.

"You can still fight?" Neji said incredulously. "How? You cannot stand! You cannot reach me unless I come within range of you, which I have no intention of doing until that bizarre boost of yours has worn off. Are you simply so loathe to—"

"Hakke kuushou!"

The attack caught Neji off guard. Fueled by Hinata's still-boosted chakra, the wave caught him and threw him back, half across the arena. He crashed to the ground and rolled, and when he came to his feet his clothes were scuffed and ripped and there was a growing bruise on his cheek.

He was kept busy, for a moment, dodging Hinata's powered-up attacks. She used them with remarkable skill, keeping him at bay, until, trying to let off another overpowered _kuushou_ , she yelled and grabbed at her hand. Blood now dripped from her right fingertips as well, and a fine mist of it was scattered about by the misfired attack.

Neji did not hesitate, but charged straight at her. Her eyes widened as he reached her, his arm withdrawn for a deadly strike, but her frantic attempt at a block only caused her arm to spasm wildly. His palm caught her in the chest, and she was thrown backward to the stone arena floor, the blue flash of the blow illuminating the scene.

Hinata lay still, dreadfully still, for a few moments, before she stirred, turned to the side, and coughed frantically into a hand. Blood sprayed out, mingling with the blood already dripping from her tenketsu.

Neji stood over her, still at a safe distance, outside striking range. His mask of disdain had shattered, perhaps when she caught him with the empty palm; his face now held only rage.

Hinata had again struggled to one knee, but there was no longer any defiance in her carriage. Every few breaths, she again coughed up blood, and she had shrunk into herself, bowing her head, her shoulders stooped.

"I...I'm sorry, N-Neji-nii-san," she said, quietly, raggedly, and coughed. "I could...could not show you...but you should know...please! You are not...trapped...you do not have to...please...." She burst out coughing again, and fell silent.

Neji's face twisted. "One cannot alter one's fate," he said, almost to himself. Then he focused on Hinata. "You cannot change your fate! You are weak! All your games—all your tricks—they do not avail you! It is your fate to be weak—it is my fate to be strong—it was _his_ fate to..." He trailed off, shakily.

Hinata looked up, urgency in her voice, though it was still weak. "No! You cannot...don't you see? You are not trapped—you can do...but you are unhappy! You need to be able to—to let go! Don't think that it is your fate to be miserable forever!"

He turned on her, desperately angry. "You fool! You sit there with your—your _fate_ , and you think it can simply be shaken off? That it is such an easy thing to ignore? He could not ignore it! It is not a matter of changing your mind—or why was it not for him? Why could he not throw off his fate, if it is so easy?" By the end, he was almost spitting, his face frantic, twisted.

Hinata looked riven. "Neji-nii-san...."

Neji snapped. "SHUT UP!" he bellowed, launching himself at her, chakra gathering around his hand again in a blue haze. Hinata's eyes widened, and fear flashed across her face.

In that moment there were several blurs of motion. Naruto did not notice any of them, being in the midst of his own. Moving without any conscious intervention, he clapped his hands into a ram seal and pushed chakra in a pattern that he had practiced exhaustively during the month after the Wave mission, just so he could get Sasuke to stop gloating about it. An incomprehensible rush, a blur that was not so much himself moving as the world moving around him, and....

The shunshin put him directly between Neji and Hinata, barely a pace's distance from either. Neji was charging at him, his hand slashing forward—there was another flash of motion, someone standing behind the charging Hyuuga—Naruto did not have time to think about blocking, but Neji's blow went home in his shoulder, missing anywhere vital—a sudden, excruciatingly painful shock, Naruto clenched his teeth in pain—he stumbled backwards, almost stepping on Hinata before he regained his balance—Neji was in front of him, being yanked backward by two different jounin, the grown-up lookalike of Lee and Hinata's sensei, the genjutsu type. His face was wild, but he was not struggling.

The Lee-clone—Gai, that was his name—was talking in Neji's ear, quietly, urgently. Hinata's sensei stepped backward, still looking warily at the Hyuuga, and turned toward Naruto and Hinata. Her eyes widened just slightly when she saw Naruto, and then she shot him a small, knowing grin.

Naruto was spared the ordeal of trying to decipher this, because he sensed a motion behind him, and heard the thud of something heavy hitting the floor.

He spun so quickly that it left afterimages, and stared down at Hinata, lying flat on the ground, her eyes closed, the bulging veins around them subsided. Her head was turned to the side, and a thin trickle of blood still ran down her cheek from her mouth.

He was on his knees beside her in another of those motions without any prompting by his conscious mind, listening frantically at her chest. Yes, there was a heartbeat, and breathing, though pitifully faint. Her arms were covered in blood, leaking from the burned-looking spots all up and down them. Her leg was twisted around unnaturally, ahead of her.

He vaguely heard a female voice in the background urgently yelling at someone. There were running footsteps, some other voices making a lot of noise at each other. Then two unfamiliar men were coming up in front of him, a stretcher on the ground, Hinata being maneuvered carefully onto it. Naruto noticed it only tangentially.

A familiar cough, behind him. Cough. Seriously, had that examiner not had his lungs looked at?

"Winner, by intervention, is Hyuuga Neji."

Naruto slowly stood, still stuck in that dreamlike mode. He turned, to see Neji, standing on his own feet now, Gai beside him, still looking concerned. Neji's face had slid back into disdain, rather than hot rage.

_He won? He did this, and he gets to say he won?_

Naruto remembered Hinata, lying there, helpless, remembered Neji charging her, remembered the shock of chakra in his shoulder, which had been aimed for her heart. _He would have killed her—for what? For the match? For their stupid clan-branch warfare? Because something bad happened to him a long time ago that she had nothing to do with?_

...he discovered that he was grinding his teeth, and stopped.

Neji's eyes fell on him, and he snorted. "One failure to intervene for another? I suppose it is only to be expected."

Naruto turned to him, all the emotion draining out of his face. The seal clamored within him to be let loose, and he obliged it; lines patterned the world, and a buzz of energy became audible, just below the surface of his mind.

"You." His voice might have frozen water.

Neji, who had half turned toward the staircase, glanced back. "You have something to say to me?"

"You. You did this...I don't even care why. Listen to me, Hyuuga Neji. You're going to continue on in this tournament. I'm going to fight you. When I fight you, whenever that might be, _I will kill you._ " He smiled, or at least moved his lips. "And if you lose before then...if you don't make it, if you don't fight me, you and the world will know that you were too afraid to face a _failure._ "

Neji looked momentarily taken aback, then his face hardened. "You as well harbor delusions of adequacy, I see. If you so wish to fight me, I will oblige you. I will show you the difference between a lot of pretty threats and the strength to carry through with them."

Naruto's unnatural smile deepened, and his voice carried a hint of a grating malice that was all too familiar to him from within. "See you there, Hyuuga Neji."

* * *

Naruto walked back along the balcony in a haze. The seal was still open, but this seemed a background consideration. Neji was ahead of him, already with his team, both of whom seemed to be remonstrating with him. He himself stood straight as a rod, unmoving, staring down at the arena. Naruto felt his fingernails cutting into his palm and forced himself to relax his fist.

Sakura gave him a tremulous look as he came up beside her. When he leaned on the railing, still tense, she seemed almost to shrink away. Naruto frowned inwardly and took a mental inventory. Nothing, nothing—he might have looked angry, but Sakura had seen that before—was something else happening?

As if as an afterthought, he closed the seal. Sakura immediately let out a sigh of relief and relaxed. Naruto groaned, dropping his head to the railing.

"I was leaking something, wasn't I?"

Sakura nodded hesitantly. "Yes...it felt like when you unleashed...that, in the forest, but not so bad."

Naruto nodded. "Sorry. I'm just...really pissed off." He consciously did not glare at Neji; it would do no good to sit around fuming.

There was still a confusion of people down in the arena. Several medic-nin were prominent among them—Naruto had no idea what they were doing, since Hinata had already been carried off—one of whom was talking agitatedly with Hinata's sensei. The proctor had withdrawn off to one side and was carrying on a whispered conversation with the Hokage.

Kiba and Shino were standing just where they had been, nearby. Kiba looked disheveled and angry; Shino was standing rigidly straight, which Naruto noted as unusual, given that he had previously walked with a limp and held one leg gingerly out.

Kiba was fidgeting, his hands tensing and relaxing on the railing, occasionally grinding his teeth. At length, he blew out an explosive breath and turned to Naruto.

"Hey. Naruto."

Naruto turned to look at him, rather lethargically. He was still fidgety, but his sudden rage against Neji had left him tired and mildly nervous; there had been altogether too much of Kyuubi in his threats, too much ice and not enough fire. It was uncharacteristic of him, and the last time he had felt that way, he had done something he still shuddered to remember.

"Yeah?"

Kiba seemed uncomfortable, but pressed forward. "Did you...did you mean that, about killing that prick?"

Naruto paused to think about it. He had certainly meant it when he made the threat...but now? After reflection? The only thing that he could feel when he thought of the older Hyuuga was rage, images flashing through his mind of Hinata's face when her leg had broken, of blood dripping from her eyes.

"...Yeah. I think I did. Unless...unless she really doesn't want me to—it looked like she was still trying to be nice to him, even when he was about to kill her. The bastard...." Naruto scowled venomously. "In either case, I'm sure going to beat the crap out of the guy."

Kiba nodded slowly. "Yeah...well, Naruto, you're not the only guy who wants to."

Naruto glanced over at Kiba, suddenly understanding. "Yeah? Well...I guess we'll see, won't we?"

Kiba stared back levelly. "I guess we will. And...Naruto...if you fight him first...." His face twisted in a snarl, a frightening expression on his already mildly animalistic face. "Kick his _ass._ "

Naruto nodded. "Same to you, Kiba."

Shino spoke up from behind them, startling Naruto. "Though I am as ill-disposed towards Hyuuga Neji as anyone who esteems Hinata-san, I suppose I am not so emotionally invested in personally delivering his comeuppance. Though should I face him I will certainly do him as much damage as is realistically possible, I will be satisfied if he is beaten at all, regardless of who does so." His monotone was flatter than usual.

Naruto gave a nod of acknowledgement.

Sakura, beside him, shivered. "Naruto...are you really going to kill Neji-san?"

Naruto stared bleakly down into the arena. "Why not? Not like it'd be the first time."

Sakura shuddered, obviously also remembering the bridge at Wave. "I suppose...but it feels different if it's a Leaf-nin, you know?"

Naruto laughed hollowly. "Wouldn't be the first time for that either, would it?"

Sakura suddenly stared at him, perturbed. "W-what?"

"You remember Mizuki, that teacher?"

Sakura nodded slowly.

"Turns out, he decided to turn traitor right when we graduated last year, and in the process tricked me into going along with it and then tried to kill me. Iruka, too, when he showed up. That...was why I got promoted after all, for killing him and saving Iruka."

Sakura made a noise that could only be described as a squeak. "Really? Mizuki-sensei? And—you—when you graduated?"

Naruto gave her a sour smile. "Funny, ain't it, the things you don't hear about?"

Sakura nodded shakily, looking pensive. Naruto shook his head convulsively and threw off that train of thought. The noise of the selector beginning its next roll provided a convenient distraction. All the genin stared up at it as it flicked through names to choose two of them.
    
    
      
                Uzumaki Naruto 
                      vs. 
                 Inuzuka Kiba
    
    

The two named turned to each other with near-identical significant looks.

"Guess we'll see right now," said Kiba, finally.

* * *

Kiba fidgeted nervously as he stood across from Naruto. The blond's face was flat, which was worrying. For as long as Kiba had known the other boy, he had always been exaggeratedly emotive, always flashing a wide grin or a pout or a sulk. Even when he was quietly dejected, that was less unsettling than...nothing.

He took a deep breath. Naruto's problems aside, he was an opponent now. And the stakes in this fight were more important than mere promotion. A crack at the bastard genius Hyuuga awaited.

"Hey, Naruto, nothing personal, but I'm not gonna be holding back any, all right? I want to beat that guy till his eyebrows bleed."

Naruto's emotionless visage cracked, and he gave a grin. It was not so wide as his usual, and his eyes were still troubled, but Kiba was suddenly less apprehensive.

"Glad to hear it, Kiba. Not to patronize you or anything, but I will be. Because, you know, death and pain and it looks like hamburger meat."

Kiba grinned back twistedly. It took only a mild effort to avoid flinching at the memory of the Oto-nin's corpse. Animalistic berserker fighting, after all, was his own forte. "I'm sure it would be an unrecoverable blow to my honor to admit that I'm glad to hear that."

The referee cleared his throat. "You may begin!" And promptly took several steps backward.

Kiba barely crouched, and prepared himself. "All right, let's see! Shikyaku no jutsu!"

The familiar rush came over him as his chakra reshaped him. The power of his muscles was multiplied, his useless human claws and teeth grew and strengthened themselves, and the world of smell, ordinarily dull and faded—though a shinobi who was not an Inuzuka could not perceive it at all—became sharp, precise, as good a guide to what was around him as his eyes. He dropped to all fours, the stance feeling as natural as upright walking ever had.

Akamaru, beside him, whined in greeting.

Kiba launched himself at Naruto, faster than a human could see, unless they were Sasuke. He distractedly noted Naruto shifting, then suddenly recoiling from the motion. Then he had reached him, elbow leading, and checked into him with his full weight. Naruto flew backwards and crashed to the ground, and a minor scent of new blood entered the air. The smell of Naruto's blood mingled with much of Hinata's, some small bit of Neji's, the sickening stench of Tsurugi Misumi's death.

Naruto did not move for several seconds, though his chest rose and fell with his breath. Kiba stared at his quiescent form, nonplussed. "Hey, you really going to go down that easy? And here I was getting all worried."

Naruto groaned, tried to move his legs, groaned again, then, in a maneuver that really shouldn't have been possible with an injured stomach, whiplashed himself to his feet. He was breathing just slightly harder than he had before, and rubbed the back of his head with a grin.

"Wow! You hit harder than Sasuke does." His grin turned anticipatory, and slightly frightening. "Not the hardest I've been hit this exam, though."

Kiba was nonplussed for a moment, then grinned again himself. "Figures. You'd _have_ to be better than that. All right! Hey, Akamaru! Let's go!"

Akamaru barked in answer, and they both charged. Naruto grinned, the expression free of any trepidation despite his never moving. When Kiba reached him and slammed into him again, he found himself stumbling through a rapidly dispersing cloud. The indefinable personal signature of Naruto's scent was replaced by the half-fresh, half-acrid tang of chakra smoke.

He spun around, to see Naruto, still grinning, behind him.

"Hey, Kiba! So let's play a game! It's called 'Which One Is Real', and you're not going to win it!"

In a puff of smoke, one Naruto became ten, and they spread out around the arena. None made any hostile moves, but simply stood, all wearing that same identical, infuriating grin. All were identical—to all his senses, even his nose, it was as if ten of the boy really had shown up out of nowhere. The lingering scent of imperfectly controlled chakra was evenly dispersed throughout the arena. Kiba growled. Before, anyone who tried to use clones against him had quickly been educated of their mistake—even with the fuzzy nose of his ordinary human form, a person's scent was easily distinguishable from the nothingness of a _bunshin no jutsu_. What was this, then?

He charged at one. It disappeared as he hit it, and he whirled and went at the next one. It, too, was a clone, disappearing with a pop and a puff of smoke. He heard the same pop over to one side, and saw Akamaru whining in frustration. The remaining clones still grinned brightly, unfazed.

As Kiba went after the next clone, he caught a flash out of the corner of his eye, and another three clones appeared, scattered around the room, their faces already in that same unchanging smirk. Kiba gritted his teeth.

"Akamaru! Ignore the new ones—we know those aren't him!"

Akamaru barked in acknowledgement, and charged at another clone. None of them were making any effort to defend themselves—it took only one punch from Kiba, or one bite from Akamaru, to disperse them. Kiba saw more being created out of the corner of his eye, but he ignored them. There were only three left of the original group now—now only two—now one, Kiba saw Akamaru snapping at an arm that became a cloud of smoke—and Kiba charged at the last one, the one that had to be Naruto himself, frustrated and completely ready to actually do some damage to the blond.

His fist slammed into Naruto's face, only to slip through as he turned into yet another cloud of smoke.

Kiba spun about and snarled in frustration, facing the crowd of newly created clones. "That isn't possible! Where the hell are you, Naruto?"

There was scattered laughter among the doppelgangers, and they spoke, not all in unison, but ping-ponging the floor between them.

"At some point—"

"I'm going to have to—"

"give Kakashi-sensei a really nice birthday present—"

"for teaching me that sealless Kawarimi!"

Kiba growled. "You annoying—I'll get you!"

He charged again at one of the clones, only for it to dodge back and avoid his punch. More voices echoed out from within the crowd.

"You know, I've been letting you have it too easy!"

"So this time the clones will actually fight you!"

Kiba whirled about as one of the duplicate Narutos ran at him from the side, its arm cocked back for a punch. He knocked the blow aside and countered with a kick, and the clone dispersed itself. Then he felt a mildly hard punch to his kidney connect from behind him, and spun again to drop a knee on the outstretched arm of the clone that had hit him. It disappeared into another cloud of smoke.

He heard an outraged bark off to the side, and spun to see Akamaru break a clone's grip on his forelegs, dispersing it. Kiba charged towards him. Akamaru was still too small for melee fighting, until they did the transformation. One clone might pose no problem for him, but a few could capture him if they tried, and a threat to Akamaru....

The clones tried to impede him, but they were unsuccessful. The blows they could unleash were painful, but easy enough to fight through in his four-legged state. A few once got the idea to try to dog-pile him, but a single savage slashing spin sufficed to take care of all of them. He saw more being created out of the corner of his eye, and growled. Fighting the clones was a losing battle. They needed to find the original.

He reached Akamaru, who jumped up to his shoulder with a grateful bark. Then turned, to see the main mass of clones gathering together, all with identical grins. Then they charged as one.

Kiba charged straight back at them, diving into the middle of the pack, laying about with fists and feet. Any clone that came within range of him died, but more were created. He was taking hits, but they could be ignored. A few tried to snatch Akamaru off his back, but the dog was more than capable of taking off the fingers of anyone who tried to grab him, which of course dispersed the clones.

Then, suddenly, there was a whiff of something else behind him—fire and blood and the inexplicable scent of fox. He was halfway through spinning around when a juggernaut seemed to hit him in the back. Kiba was thrown across the arena, almost landing on some other clones, who dodged out of the way. He only just managed to spin as he flew and land on his feet. Akamaru, who had jumped off as he spun, landed in front of him with a growl.

"Now just what the hell was that?" Kiba shouted, almost snarling. His back felt as if someone had laid a hot poker in the shape of a fist on it for a minute or so, and every movement stung.

There was more laughter amid the clones.

"I _love_ my sealless kawarimi!"

Kiba growled. "Just how the hell does a sealless kawarimi lead to you hitting me harder than Mom does?" He was not really expecting an answer, and no answer was forthcoming. He turned to Akamaru.

"This isn't going anywhere. We've got to get all of them at once. Ready?"

Akamaru barked in answer, apparently equally frustrated. Kiba grinned in anticipation as he took the two pills from the pouch at his waist.

"All right, Naruto, here's the next level!" He popped one pill into his mouth, and tossed the other to Akamaru. The dog jumped to catch it, and growled happily as his muscles swelled, his teeth grew and his fur turned dark red.

Kiba himself felt the mild drain of the four-legged sheath refilled as if it had never been. Power flowed through him, revitalizing, addicting. He dropped to all fours again, and Akamaru jumped up to his back.

"Transformation! Juujin bunshin!"

The slight weight of Akamaru on his back grew many fold as he transformed. Kiba crouched down under the weight and bared his teeth. The mob of clones took on a flurry of surprised looks at the sudden change.

Kiba grinned ferally. "All right, let's go! Akamaru! Get them all!" The dog-turned-clone jumped down from his back, and both charged at the clones. Kiba's mouth opened in a snarl as he marked out his targets and leapt.

"GATSUUGA!"

The world blurred out in a whirl of gray. He could not see, spinning so fast, but he could still smell as well as ever. The distinctive smell of far too many Narutos was spread out before him, and he aimed his spiral at one half of the group. The smell of chakra smoke blew up his nostrils as he plowed through the first few clones, then turned and went back again through the main body of the group. There was a dim awareness of Akamaru, off to the side, doing the same thing, and the numbers of clones were diminishing. He made one final pass, finishing off four more clones, and then Naruto's scent had been replaced entirely by that of leftover chakra. Dropping out of the spiral, he landed on his feet, panting slightly. Akamaru landed several feet away.

No more clones were visible. Kiba looked around suspiciously, searching for the real Naruto. He saw nothing. Then the sound of slow applause sounded from above him.

He whirled to look upward, and saw Naruto, hanging from the ceiling, clapping slowly, a grin on his face.

"Hey, Kiba, that was actually really impressive! I like it! That would have really hurt if it hit me."

Kiba growled softly, but Naruto's grin remained unchanged. He continued clapping slowly, until Kiba grabbed a kunai from his belt and winged it at him. Naruto dodged aside, and the knife embedded itself in the stone ceiling.

Naruto sighed theatrically. "All right, I get it, no more pauses in the middle of battle to compliment each others' technique." He dropped to the ground, turning over in midair and landing with a thud. He grinned again, this time with bloody anticipation. "My turn."

There was no seal or gesture, but suddenly there were more clones, standing shoulder to shoulder in a wide circle around both Kiba and Akamaru. Kiba stared at the spot where the original Naruto had stood, his eyes narrowed, but nothing could distinguish the duplicate there from any of the others. Naruto's voice came from around him, again ping-ponging around the circle; Kiba suppressed the instinct to jerk his head around in order to keep his eye on the one speaking.

"So when we went on this mission a while ago—"

"There was this guy with this really annoying technique."

"Kept you trapped in just one place—"

"you couldn't get out no matter what—"

"and meanwhile he was cutting you up."

"So I figured I'd try my hand at it!"

This time, all the clones spoke in unison.

"Try to get out, Kiba!"

Kiba growled quietly, glancing around at the clones. He was considering his options when Akamaru lost his patience.

With a growl, the transformed dog jumped for the edge of the circle, beginning a spiral as he did so. He bore down on the clones as if as a huge gray drill. Kiba clenched his teeth as he approached the circle's edge, his eyes locked on the clones.

That was to his misfortune a moment later, as the spot was engulfed in a flash sun-bright. Kiba snarled and threw an arm across his eyes, too late to protect them. At the same time, there was a deafening crash of sound, nearly burning out his ears just as his eyes, and a shock of pressure passing over him, almost throwing him back. Bits of something hard pelted him across the face and chest, and he was suddenly glad of his arm across his face. The commotion died down in only a few seconds, though it seemed longer, and Kiba cautiously uncovered his eyes again.

For a few moments, he could see only spots, but his vision began to clear soon enough. Akamaru, his transformation disrupted, again in the form of a tiny white dog, lay dead still near the center of the circle. Where he had charged, there was a hole in the line of clones centered on a deep crater in the floor. Already more clones were appearing, covering the gap in their defenses.

Kiba rushed to Akamaru's side, dropping to his knees. The dog was still alive, as testified by the faint rise and fall of his chest, and as far as Kiba could tell he hadn't even broken any bones. There were faint spots of blood on his white fur.

Naruto's voice, mildly concerned, came from one side of the circle. "Hey, is he all right?"

Kiba glanced up in surprise, and nodded cautiously. Momentarily, another clone approached them from the circle. Kiba set himself between Akamaru and the clone protectively, but the duplicate Naruto held up its hands in token of truce.

"Hey, if you want I can get him out of here. No strings attached. This place isn't gonna be great to be in for a bit, and I think he's not quite so sturdy as you are."

Kiba stared at him suspiciously, but after a moment in which the clone made no threatening moves he nodded and stood aside. Naruto-clone carefully gathered the dog up in his arms and walked back to the edge of the circle, the line parting momentarily to let him through, then closing up again. The voice of a different clone came from the edge of the circle.

"All right, then! Just you and me!"

Kiba nodded slowly, and glared at the clones.

"Hey, you're kinda nice about it, but you still hurt Akamaru. I'm kind of obligated to beat you up now."

The clones grinned in unison. "Good! Then let's go, Kiba!" And they set themselves in their formation again.

Kiba set his mouth in a scowl and grabbed a smoke bomb from a pouch at his belt. He whipped it at the circle, and it let off a great cloud of choking smoke as it went off, obscuring a good quarter of the confining arc. Kiba grinned in anticipation and made as if to charge through the cloud, but he was preempted.

There was a deafening concussion from within the cloud. The smoke itself was blown away by the blast, though the flash of it was obscured. Kiba, suddenly arresting his charge, lost his balance and tumbled backward, only just avoiding falling on his butt. By the time the place was visible again, clones had already reformed the line over a new crater in the floor.

Kiba growled in frustration and retreated to the center of the circle. After a moment's thought, he pulled out a handful of shuriken and charged again, this time at a new place to avoid having to run over broken ground. As he approached the line of clones, before they could detonate, he threw the shuriken ahead of him in a perfect spread.

Only two clones were dispelled, the remainder dodging or deflecting the projectiles with weapons of their own. Then the surviving clones charged again, at him.

Kiba backpedaled frantically, trying to put distance between himself and the attacking clones before they could close and explode themselves. He pulled out more shuriken and managed to get a few more, and as he approached the center of the circle the others pulled back to the edge. More clones formed to replace those lost, and Kiba gritted his teeth. It was the same as before—taking out any number of clones was completely unproductive. That technique of Naruto's was insane.

A laugh echoed out from the edge of the circle, and one clone spoke. "How's it going for you in there, Kiba?" The question, while mocking, did not have the edge of real malice, but Kiba still scowled. It was humiliating to be so perfectly checkmated.

_Can't take the explosion, I'd come out of it better than Akamaru but not by much. Can't get them to move out of the way, can't get too close to them...._

Kiba suddenly grinned, an idea coming to him. He backed up towards the other edge of the circle, then, before coming too close to the clones there, charged back across the center. As he approached the other side, he prepared himself, crouched, then jumped high—higher, he hoped, than any clone could all unprepared.

As he flew, on track to easily clear the circle, he saw another knot of clones outside it, all crouching down for some reason, underneath his projected path. He would clear them as well, but something about them made him uneasy—

And then they all stood as one, raising their arms with a convulsive effort, and one of their number flew up to greet him.

Kiba barely had time to notice before it approached him. It was arcing down from above with a cheery grin, and it had the temerity to wave at him as it came closer.

Then, as expected, it exploded.

The light was blinding, but Kiba managed to close his eyes in time. What hit him was the deafening, thundering noise, and then it felt as if a giant had swatted him out of the sky. He fell far faster than he had risen, and he only had time to understand, with a terrible clarity, that this was going to hurt before he smashed into the ground.

The pain was...painful. No worse than he had felt many a time, but still, blasted painful. What was worse was the distinctive feeling of broken bones rubbing together in his legs and chest, and the knowledge that he could not get up and fight again.

There was a sort of shuffling noise all around him, and he cracked his eyes open to see a black-and-orange blur standing over him. Black, orange, blond, green...right, that would be Naruto. He closed his eyes again, that being the limit of what they were up to at the moment. He could hear nothing over the pair of belligerent weaponsmiths that seemed to have taken up residence in his ears.

There was a period of nothingness before he opened his eyes again. They were clearer, this time. There were some other people on the field, coming closer to him. He wondered for a moment what they wanted before he registered the stretcher they were carrying, and then they were next to him, laying the stretcher down, lifting him up. There was a flare of pain, but he could ignore it. What chafed him was the implication: that he had lost. An instinct yelled at him to stand up, tell the referee that he could still fight, and was only squashed by the fact that, in fact, he couldn't.

The clanging, pounding noise in his ears had started to diminish, and he opened his eyes again to see that things were almost distinct. Naruto was walking next to him as the stretcher-bearers left the room, presumably heading for the infirmary that Hinata had gone to when they arrived—and where, he realized with a jerk, she would be now.

He could hear the babbling of voices above him, and with a bit of effort even understand them. He lifted his arm weakly, aiming to grab Naruto's sleeve, but missed. The medic-nin carrying him stopped, and he stared intently at Naruto, who was looking down at him.

"Naruto...."

The blond nodded, a little uncertain.

"...Beat that bastard to Hell."

Naruto froze, then nodded resolutely. Kiba nodded back, feebly, then collapsed back supine on the stretcher. He felt a powerful temptation to close his eyes.

* * *

Standing again on the balcony along the side of the room, Naruto felt oddly disengaged. He had beaten Kiba. He had verified that it was his right to face Neji. Now he felt a strange urge to go to sleep.

He only peripherally noticed the selector spinning again, and glanced at its verdict.
    
    
      
                Higurashi Tenten 
                      vs. 
                  Temari
    
    

Tenten split off from the tense knot of her team with an air of relief, and walked down to the arena floor. Across from her, one of the other two Suna-nin, the older girl, had taken up her own position. The huge implement across her back proved to be an enormous folding fan, the struts of reinforced metal, which she spun out beside her with an air of disdain.

Tenten had set herself up on one of the arena's set lines, which had, improbably enough, remained untouched throughout the contest, all the fights that damaged the arena having migrated well away from the starting lines by the time they reached that point. She looked at her opponent pensively, not betraying much emotion.

The proctor called the start, and Tenten made the first move. She jumped backward to open the range, and threw a spread of kunai at the other kunoichi. The Suna-nin's lips tightened, and she moved her fan, sliding it partway open and swinging it across in front of her. Then...something...happened, something that Naruto couldn't quite properly see, and the kunai were all lodged in the arena floor, directly in front of the Suna-nin's starting line. She had not even moved.

Tenten crouched, her body language betraying greater tension, and she moved again, throwing another spread of kunai. The Suna-nin, Temari, looked at her with disdain, and repeated her earlier maneuver, somehow deflecting the kunai just enough. They joined the others, stuck point-down in the ground just in front of her position.

These ones were glowing, the tags that hung off their ends seemingly on fire.

Temari noticed just in time. Her eyes widened, and she yanked the fan across herself just as the tags detonated as one. Temari was thrown backwards, landing on her back, and though she quickly rolled to her feet, her clothes were torn and her face dirty. A snarl came to her lips as she retaliated.

Tenten, who had tried to press her advantage, was caught off guard. The kunai that had followed the Suna-nin, tags burning on their ends as well, collided with a sudden, impossible rush of wind and were send off flying in random directions, detonating in midair. The wind, unhindered, continued on and caught Tenten up, throwing her backward in her turn, far further than the shock wave from the tags had Temari.

Temari was advancing by this point, spreading her fan to its full extension, three colored circles vivid on the white fabric. She mouthed words as she swung the fan again, and this time the wind that came out took the form of a tall whirlwind that advanced on Tenten and caught her up. She spun at the heart of the wind for a moment as it cut her up, blood staining the wind and dropping to the floor; then, Temari ended the technique, and she fell.

There was a green flash ending below Tenten, and Lee appeared beneath her, catching her as she fell. She appeared to be unconscious, and cuts raggled her arms, the only bits of her that were visible. Lee carefully laid her down, staring at Temari with dislike. The usual effect was ruined by his lack of eyebrows, and he looked dangerous but faintly ridiculous.

The announcer called out the win, and the Suna-nin composed herself and stalked back up to the balcony, taking up her position next to her teammates. Naruto knew that he should be angry at the beating dealt to a friend, but all he could muster was a sort of dull dislike. It appeared that his indignation circuits were all burned out.

There was another flurry of activity below, and then it cleared out as the selector began to spin.
    
    
      
                Haruno Sakura 
                      vs. 
                 Kankurou
    
    

Naruto turned, vaguely interested, to see Sakura's reaction; she stiffened momentarily, a tremulous look on her face, then seemingly forced herself to relax, and stood straight, staring across at the last Suna-nin with an air of determination.

* * *

Sakura stood in position across from the hooded and face-painted Suna-nin. It was familiar, from all the matches she had watched; however, standing there herself added a whole new dimension to the experience. She was nervous now, for one thing.

The Suna-nin was grinning sharkishly, confident in his victory. He grabbed the strange, cloth-wrapped bundle off his back and swung it off to one side. Sakura stood on the line, her posture hunched, making the conscious decision not to hide her nervousness. If this person wanted to underestimate her for being young and female, that was all to the good. Encouraging it would only help. And really, trying to put up a confident front at this point would take willpower better used for other things.

"Well, this shouldn't take long," said the Suna-nin, still grinning. As the examiner called the start, he dropped the bundle to the side and casually walked forward. He was taking his time, apparently banking on the intimidating effect of his larger frame coming slowly forward.

Well, that would work just fine. _The first rule of deception is to show the enemy what he expects._ Having faced Orochimaru of the Sannin, however peripherally, left this genin less than impressive; Sakura had to call memories of the languidly confident, laughing snake ninja to mind in order to get the right degree of fear behind her half-stifled squeak. She dodged back, frantically, clumsily, and dropped a smoke bomb from her belt. It took only seconds for the smoke to spread, and she fell back into its cover.

Immediately she began running through hand signs. There was only a single chakra signature ahead of her. It was a bit further from her than she would have guessed, but she put the discrepancy down to mistaken estimates of distance and continued her technique. The subtle, self-concealing web of her genjutsu floated delicately down over that signature, warping her target's mind. _The overpowering aim of any deception is that the enemy never suspect it in the least. Your goal is not merely to hide the truth, but to leave the enemy confident that your falsity is the truth._

She remained hidden in the smoke, but focused herself on creating an image in the enemy's mind, of herself, frightened but resolute, dodging out of the side of the cloud and throwing shuriken at the enemy—deliberately far off target. She could, with focus, also emulate the sound of a deflected weapon and the feeling of its deflection in the deflector, but unnecessary complexity only created more opportunities for the enemy to become suspicious.

The footsteps of the Suna-nin ceased their slow advance toward her, and turned off to the side, toward her image. She took the opportunity to create a moving blank, a blind spot, over her real body, and step out of the cloud herself so as to get a proper view. The enemy would not see anything where she was, and would in the usual manner simply unconsciously fill in the background.

The Suna-nin, whose name she had not really noticed on the board, was walking toward her image, which with a minor concentration she made retreat frantically, throwing more off-target kunai. His discarded wrapped bundle lay still at the starting line. Sakura realized with a wince that she had not remembered the positions of the illusory throwing weapons once they landed, and hoped desperately that the enemy wouldn't notice the lack of discarded shuriken or kunai.

The other genin, above, were watching with confusion, while most of the jounin had knowing grins. To be expected. She had only affected her enemy—the other type of genjutsu, which changed the look of an area so that all who saw it were fooled, was slower, less versatile, and in any case, not necessary here. To the onlookers, it would simply seem as if the Suna-nin had somehow become delusionally confused.

Her image was almost at the wall. Time to take some action. With a moment's thought, she made her image flash the seals for the bunshin no jutsu, and in time with their completion split the image in three. The flare of chakra usage that would be associated with a real bunshin would be absent, but unless her enemy was a genjutsu user himself—not the case, from his bearing and actions so far, let alone the absence of any sort of attempts at genjutsu—he wouldn't have a chakra sense worth worrying about. Not as a genin.

All three images split apart and charged, each coming from different directions at the enemy. He turned his head, apparently only now getting the idea that the rookie kunoichi might have some fight in her, and grabbed shuriken from his own belt, winging them at all three images in a spread. Sakura had them duck and dodge, not paying attention to whether any of the shuriken actually hit them. Throwing weapons would simply pass through a bunshin without effect; if he saw any of them hit, he would assume that image to be a bunshin, and that the real her had successfully dodged.

As the images came closer to him, he seemed to take notice, and backpedaled, keeping the distance open, moving for the first time faster than a casual walk. As he did, he did something strange, and a weapon appeared somehow in his hand. Sakura frowned—she hadn't gotten a good look at it, due to the poor vantage of her real body, but he must have some weapons holsters in his sleeves, or some such. The weapon itself was a strange short blade, not a kunai but more like an undersized sword. He set himself in a stance and prepared himself to meet the onslaught of the images.

Perfect. Sakura let one image push ahead of the others, holding a kunai, its expression a perfect mix of fear, nervousness and resolution. It jumped forward, aiming the kunai in a slash at the Suna-nin's arm. As she had expected, he brought up the blade in his hand to block. She caused the kunai to appear to rebound off the blade—

Crap. She _hadn't_ expected that—the enemy had brought up his other hand, a blade appearing there with the same suddenness that the first had, and sunk it hilt deep in the image, slashing deep across its illusory body. If that had been a real strike, it would have been slowly fatal, bloody and gruesome.

Well, she could still work with that. She made the image disappear in the mild flash that would end a bunshin that was catastrophically disrupted. The next move would still work well enough. She created another image of herself just behind him, and had it lay the kunai in its hand along his throat, making sure to include the terribly unsettling feeling—familiar, from spars to surrender with Sasuke and Naruto—of cold steel inches from one's life. The enemy should assume that she had simply hidden her real body among the clones and snuck up behind him by mundane means. _If one layer of a deception is revealed, most will not suspect further deception, but act on the basis of the newly revealed information. Use this to your advantage._

The result was not what she had expected. Instead of a call of surrender or, indeed, any reaction from the standing enemy, there was a strangled yell of surprise from the cloth-wrapped bundle still on the floor, and the cloth seemed to explode away from it. The strips of white parted to reveal a human form, a twin to the enemy she had been playing with, which stood frantically and looked around fearfully.

Sakura froze as her view of the situation suddenly realigned itself. _Damn! The chakra signature, the bundle, he's being so casual, those blades—damn! Why didn't I remember? Suna puppeteers!_ She had, without even knowing it, affected the real Suna-nin who had been hiding on the ground, and when he saw an image holding a knife at the throat of the fake—the puppet—he had felt it at his own. No wonder he was disturbed.

As she looked at him, she saw similar calculations playing out on his face. Then a snarl came over it, and he put his hands in a ram seal and pulsed his chakra with a growl. The fragile web of her genjutsu came undone like a spiderweb in a tornado. His eyes, now unfooled by false images, snapped to her real self, unprotected, no longer hidden, and vulnerable.

Sakura ran, cursing herself. She could not cast another genjutsu—they were slow, and in any event he was now suspicious. Some genjutsu users could bind a target no matter their awareness of the illusion; she was not one of them. Such skill was jounin level at least.

The Suna-nin, now revealed, came after her, but more frightening was his puppet. It spun around and flew straight at her, the painted face imitating its master now distorted into the frightening, obviously inhuman visage of a battle puppet.

She ducked aside, dodging the first pass. Those blades, the mystery of their availability now solved, swept at her, just missing. She winced at the feel of air parting by her ear, frantically running all she knew about Suna puppets through her head. An unhelpful jumble, really—she did not have the time to properly organize her thoughts. One thing stuck in her head: those blades were most likely poisoned.

Another pass, closer this time. A line of fire across her cheek, one that did not diminish, as a proper shallow blade-wound should, but only increased. The poisons used by Suna in the Second Shinobi World War flashed through her mind, and she could almost feel it festering, spreading....

"I surrender!"

It took her a moment to realize that it was she who had said the words. The puppet, in the midst of turning for another attack, set down on its hands and feet—well, those appendages that served it as such, anyway. The puppeteer looked at her with a smirk.

"Got cut, did you? Good decision. This stuff is nasty. Don't get the antidote soon enough, it might cause all kinds of problems. I can see your wanting to get it as soon as you can."

A flash behind him, and there was Kakashi, reassuringly tall and silver-haired. _When did he get back from dealing with Sasuke?_ His voice was cheerful, just as it was whenever he spoke to their team, but the Suna genin spun around on hearing it.

"And you have that antidote right around here somewhere, don't you, genin-chan? We wouldn't want anyone to get badly hurt, after all."

The Suna-nin bristled, but nodded grudgingly. Kakashi did not relent, however, until he was pointed with a grumble to the Suna jounin-sensei. Sakura saw Kakashi accosting him as the examiner belatedly called the win.

She turned, not knowing what else to do, and walked back up to the balcony. Kakashi appeared beside her halfway there, cheerful as always, and handed her a tiny glass filled with a thick, unpleasant-looking liquid.

"Here, drink that down, why don't you, Sakura. It'll take care of the poison, and it didn't look like that wound was severe enough to need anything else, really."

Sakura grimaced, but tipped the glass back into her mouth. It held only one swallow, but it tasted as unpleasant as it looked, and she had to force it down. She handed the glass back to Kakashi with a shudder.

"Hey, it's not so bad. I saw your fight, Sakura. Well done, even if you didn't win."

Sakura nodded slowly, running over the fight in her mind. She had done...well enough. Had she not missed the fact of the puppet—she shook her head at herself mentally, for missing what seemed so obvious in retrospect—she could have won in any number of ways.

Naruto was looking at her rather tiredly as she got back. Well, she couldn't blame him. Even her relatively effortless battle had left her wanting to do nothing more than fall comatose for at least four hours and shut out the world; he had the same effect, plus many upon many shadow clones. The only thing she knew about the effort behind that technique was that it was forbidden, but Kakashi had once mentioned that he had trouble with using it as freely as Naruto did. Demonic chakra capacity aside....

"So, Sakura, I guess there was some genjutsu something or such happening? I just kind of got confused, but it looked like he was more confused."

Sakura nodded wordlessly.

There was a shuffle down in the arena, but she could not bring herself to care. She had lost, after all. What did she have to do? She wanted to sleep. Or, at least, sit down and do absolutely nothing for a while.

She didn't know that she was shaking until she felt Kakashi's hand on her shoulder, moving in a way that it seemed highly unlikely that Kakashi would move.

"Sakura, looks like you could use a sit down. How about you go back up to the room? Nothing's going to happen here but a lot of ceremony that you don't really need to see. Hmm?"

Sakura nodded in relief, rather more frantically than she would have preferred, and made her way back to the stairs down.

* * *

Nine genin stood in a row, before the high statue, on the much-abused floor of the arena. Shino was stoic. Sasuke was smug, though standing rather uncertainly on still painful legs. Shikamaru slouched, as usual. Naruto stood only one place away from Neji, and clenched his teeth in dislike, while the Hyuuga was loftily ignoring him.

Ino, at the end of the line, looked rather small. She had received a by, the only one of the finalists not to have fought in the preliminary round, and looked as if she could have done without the honor.

The examiner stood in front of them, lecturing. Cough. "I congratulate you. You have all made it to the finals of this Chuunin Exam. Now, all of you are now tired, from these preliminaries and from the second stage. Also, you will need time to consider what you have seen, what abilities your opponents have revealed, and what you will prepare in counter. Therefore, the finals of the Chuunin Exam will be held thirty days from today." Cough. "All of you, please, take a slip of paper from this box." None of the genin moved; instead, the examiner walked along the line, letting each one take a slip. When the last one had, he moved back again, and stood near a large white board adorned with a tournament bracket, whose origin was unclear. "Please read your number aloud."

"Three." Shino's voice was dispassionate, clinical, as always.

"Eight." Sasuke was confident.

"Six." Shikamaru had absolutely perfected the art of conveying disenchantment and boredom as concisely as possible.

"Seven." Gaara, the red-haired Suna-nin, had no emotion to his voice; the maniacal bloodlust that had characterized his match seemed to have gone on vacation.

"One." Neji's voice was flat.

"Two." Naruto, ordinarily exuberant, was subdued, the gravity of the situation making itself clear.

"Five." Gaara's teammate, the Suna kunoichi, sounded bored.

"Nine." Kankurou was grumbling.

"Four." Ino's voice was small, but clear.

The examiner had been marking on the board as he went, and turned back to them as he finished.

"Thank you." Cough. "The first round of the finals will be as follows. Match One. Hyuuga Neji versus Uzumaki Naruto. Match Two. Aburame Shino versus Yamanaka Ino. Match Three. Temari versus Nara Shikamaru. Match Four. Gaara versus Uchiha Sasuke. Kankurou receives a by into the second round." Cough. "I suggest that you keep these matchings in mind while you prepare over the next four weeks." A new note of command entered the examiner's voice, and one could tell for just a moment why he was a ranking shinobi. "This concludes the second stage of the Chunin Exam. I will meet you for the Third Exam in one month. You are all dismissed, and I wish you good luck."

In the bustle that followed, Naruto met Neji's eye. The Hyuuga did not acknowledge him, but Naruto's eyes narrowed.

For all the Branch Hyuuga's arrogance, he would see the truth of his position soon. One month. And then, for his transgressions, he would die.


	16. Teachers

Naruto stood nervously outside the hospital room, seeing blurred shapes moving through the frosted glass of the door. He had made to visit Hinata in the tower's infirmary as soon as the selection of matches was done, only to find that in the interim she had been moved to the main Konoha hospital. He had poor memories of that place, but his worry about Hinata had suppressed them decisively, and he had split off from his team as soon as they were back in Konoha proper to find her, only to be told that she was still in treatment. Having nothing else to do, he paced, and fretted furiously. The silhouettes of two people were visible through the inset window, but he could not recognize them, nor make any sense of what they were doing, nor get any idea of Hinata's condition.

It was almost an hour before the tenor of the motions behind the glass changed, and several minutes after that before the door opened. A nurse came out, quickly darting off down the hallway, followed by a man in glasses, looking fatigued, wearing the headband and uniform of a medic-nin. Naruto wondered for a moment why he looked familiar, but put the issue aside.

"Ah—medic-san? Um...how is she?"

The doctor, who had been rubbing his forehead wearily, glanced down at him in surprise. One eyebrow raised.

"Ah? Uzumaki-san? Is she a friend of yours?"

Naruto nodded mutely, too anxious to engage in more than rudimentary conversation.

The doctor nodded in return, slowly, and sighed, looking very tired.

"Well, she isn't in danger for her life, and she'll make a full recovery. Right now, though, she...isn't great. The broken leg wouldn't be such a big problem, except that it can't recover properly while her chakra system is so out of order. That's the strangest damage I've ever seen—it's kind of reminiscent of what happens when someone is working on a big, old seal and catches backlash, but I can't fathom how that would happen in a fight."

Naruto seemed to shrink, looking down miserably. "The tags..." he whispered, almost inaudibly. The doctor looked at him.

"What was that, Uzumaki-san?"

Naruto glanced up quickly. "Oh—it's a chakra-boosting method I...came up with...a few weeks ago. It's supposed to just refill your capacity really quickly...but...."

The medic frowned, giving him a measuring look. "You came up with it? And she used it to this end? Are they letting the genin do research and development now?"

Naruto sighed. "I just gave a few to her, and my teammates. It was supposed to be perfectly fine—I tested them! But she used three at once...you're only supposed to use one, that should be fine for a normal person...." He looked back at the doctor rather desperately. "How bad is it? What...what happened?"

The doctor stared for a moment. "Already doing original research into combat boosts? You're very strange, Uzumaki-san." He shook his head. "Never mind. Her chakra system is...scarred. The damage will all heal, but for the moment we've got her heavily sealed to keep her chakra flow down low enough that it wouldn't make the problem worse. But, of course, holding down the chakra flow retards the healing process. Even with our best healers...the soonest she'll be able to channel enough chakra to stand is in two weeks or so. We can wake her up in perhaps a week."

Naruto nodded shakily. "Wow..." He fell silent, cursing himself mentally.

The doctor looked at him. "Frightening, isn't it. Luckily she's young—her chakra system is more malleable than most. The same damage done to an adult might well have put them out of action permanently." He gave Naruto a stern look over his glasses. "You had best be careful with your combat boosts, Uzumaki-san."

Naruto gave several frantic nods. "Yeah! Of course...they work fine when you use them like you should, but...damn it! I should have warned her, but I didn't know...." He trailed off, and was silent for a moment before speaking again. "When...when will she recover? And when can I see her?"

"We can wake her up in perhaps a week. She can have visitors then. After that, depending on how things go, it will take perhaps a week for her to be strong enough to stand, then another few before she can practice again. I should say a full six weeks before she can fight without fear of a relapse. Luckily, we can heal the leg and the damage to her lungs and heart slowly while her chakra system repairs itself." The doctor shook his head slowly. "That damage to her organs...whenever I see the wounds of jyuuken, I cannot decide whether to curse the Hyuuga or be grateful that they're loyal to this village."

"Don't tar her with the same brush as her whole bastard clan." That came out bitter.

The doctor gave him a startled look. "A family issue?"

Naruto clenched his teeth. "Her cousin did that to her."

There were shadows on the medic's eyes as he shook his head, sadly. "A pity. It seems, sometimes, that all the most powerful shinobi are the ones who are least happy, most angry, most...tormented." He turned his gaze on Naruto. "You bear a little of that mark, I think. Perhaps the young Hyuuga does so as well." He shook his head again. "Ah, well...Unfortunately, I now must go, Uzumaki-san. I hope that your endeavor in the examinations meets with success." He turned, fatigue and sadness still plain in his posture, and made as if to leave.

"Wait!" said Naruto hurriedly. As the doctor turned back, he quickly collected himself. "Ah...can I go in to see her? I know she's asleep, but...."

The doctor raised one eyebrow, then slowly shook his head. "Not so soon after she's been treated. If you were to come back tomorrow morning, I could allow you in. But you know she won't be awake until quite some while later."

Naruto nodded. "I know, but...I just...I don't know," he muttered, trailing off. "It just...it wouldn't feel right, not going in to see her as soon as I can."

The doctor smiled briefly. "Is that so? Well, I can oblige you tomorrow morning, Uzumaki-san. Until then...try to sleep properly tonight. You might find it difficult." He turned and left, this time unimpeded.

Naruto sighed, and taking a last look back through the blurred glass, walked back to the stairs down and out.

* * *

The next morning found him in the hospital again, pacing the halls. Though he had gotten in the front door all right, Hinata's room was locked, and the doctor he had spoken to was nowhere to be found. He chose to spare himself the humiliation of attempting to get the door opened by any of the generally unfriendly hospital staff, and simply walked around, compulsively walking by the front doors every five minutes looking for him.

It took half an hour after Naruto's arrival before the doctor showed up. Naruto missed his entry at the door, but rather ran into him in the same third-floor corridor as Hinata's room; he recognized Naruto immediately, and without prompting led him to the room and opened it.

Hinata lay on the bed inside. She was covered by a standard-issue hospital gown, but from what he could see of her, even without the gown she would have been basically invisible under the wrappings of bandages. They covered her left arm completely, with dark spots of blood visible underneath. Around half her face was also covered, including her eyes, and her leg was wrapped in a hard cast. Her chest rose and fell slowly with her breath, but there was no other motion, and her face was calm, relaxed, unnaturally so. It was immediately clear that her state was deeper than mere sleep.

Strips of white cloth, brighter than the bandages, ran in spirals down her arms and legs and around her chest. Written on them in small spidery lines were seals, inscrutable in their tiny size; every few inches, there was a small, intricate circle, all joined by the thin lines of writing. Driven by long habit, Naruto peered at the seals in attempt to decipher them, but he could not get more than a vague impression of their purpose—to regulate the flow of chakra within Hinata's battered coils.

Naruto winced at seeing her. There was something fundamentally wrong with Hinata, ordinarily so quick to move, lying still and silent. With the bandages on her eyes and face and the position of her arms she might as well have been laid out for embalming. Only the slow movement of her chest testified that she was still alive.

He felt momentarily guilty for not having brought anything to liven up the uniformly dull-white hospital room, then ridiculous for wanting to bring gifts to a coma patient. There was a chair sitting to one side in the room; he sat down heavily. The room was identical to all the other rooms in the hospital, including the one where he had discovered the fox's eyes three years ago. The short bedside table was indistinguishable from the one he had cut up in his frustration. Sitting there brought back strange memories.

The room was silent but for the subtle noise of Hinata's breath. Naruto sighed aloud, the sudden sound loud in the room, and shook his head.

"Man...." he muttered, looking at Hinata. "Man, he really did a number on you, didn't he, Hinata-chan? That and the tags...." He sighed. "Those tags can be kind of nasty, I guess. Got to be careful with them. I don't know...." He trailed off. "I keep thinking I should have warned you, but I didn't know what would happen with three tags at once...it worked, though, I guess. It could have been worse." He shook his head again and fell silent.

It was a few minutes of peaceful quiet after that when there was a tapping at the door. Naruto glanced up, and, seeing a shape at the frosted window, rose and walked toward it. That was different, he recalled with a frown. The room he had slept in had had a solid wooden door, without the glass. Why had it changed?

He opened the door as quietly as he could, though the care was probably unnecessary, and saw the doctor standing there. He was beckoned out, and followed along without question, down the hall a short way to a small alcove of an office set in the wall. Naruto was again assailed by a sense of familiarity about the doctor, and it took a moment to place it. He was the same man who had tended to him three years ago, the only time he had ever been in the hospital for a prolonged stay himself.

When they reached the office, the doctor turned around and spoke. "Uzumaki-san, a question."

Naruto nodded.

The doctor inclined his head. "You said that the damage to her chakra system originates from overuse of some tags that you made. Do you have any of these with you?"

Naruto nodded again, digging into the pocket on his leg. "Yeah, they're something I kind of carry these days. Not too helpful for me, since I just kind of...don't get tired, but if I needed to help someone else...." He extracted a tag, with circle and knot and the faint barely-felt hum of a chakra-active seal, and handed it to the doctor.

He took it with a slight frown and examined the seal. "Hmm. It's simple enough. How did you...ah, I see. It simply drops the chakra into the affected area, and lets the body's own circuits deal with it." The doctor looked back up at Naruto. "I imagine you find them to be rather inefficient?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, I just get around it by charging them up with a whole lot of chakra. Kind of figured that that's why no one else has ever done it, since as far as I can tell even Kakashi wouldn't be able to charge one without giving himself chakra exhaustion."

The doctor nodded. "That's true. From what I can tell...if it does truly work by simply dumping the chakra into the body, then not quite a tenth of what you charged it with should get through, when all the inefficiencies are compounded."

Naruto looked up, surprised. "A tenth? Really? I know about half goes with the long-term storage thing, but I figured it would be about that good."

The doctor shook his head. "No, not really. As noted, about half of it is wasted in the operation of the long-term storage methods which eliminate irregularities over time, but I wouldn't guess that you can get more than sixty percent efficiency when you charge it, with this simple an input. But the real issue is when it's used. Do you know, Uzumaki-san, that there's a well-known method of recharging someone's chakra capacity using fuinjutsu, and this isn't it?"

Naruto nodded, then shook his head, looking uncertain. "Well...I've read some books that kind of mention it in passing, which is how I got started thinking about these. But I don't know anything about it."

The doctor nodded. "It's rather obscure, and not nearly so convenient. It's rather a lengthy ritual actually, and it involves a donor and a recipient directly; there's no storage. The method involves creating a notional link straight between their chakra systems using seals, so that chakra flows out of one person's coils and straight into the other's. And this is a complicated and a difficult thing, and it requires quite some degree of customization to the specific donor and recipient. All in all, it's more useful for research than for combat, either that or the occasional emergency medical treatment." He indicated the tag in his hand. "Yours, on the other hand, is simply dropping the chakra directly into the body of the user. No connection to the coils is made. The coils pick it up, of course, but that's simply though saturation. The end result is that maybe only a quarter to a third of the chakra that is successfully released enters the chakra system."

"Huh." Naruto frowned. "That's worse than I would have figured. Oh, well. Not a huge problem, if it works. Unless—would there be any bad consequences from using them, if it dumps a lot of energy that doesn't get used?"

The doctor shook his head. "I shouldn't think so. The excess chakra should just dissipate. Perhaps the user might notice a bit of increased temperature, but that should be all." He made as if to hand the tag back to Naruto, then hesitated. "Ah—Uzumaki-san? Do you mind if I keep this? I should like to run a few tests."

Naruto waved dismissively. "Go ahead. They're no more difficult for me than exploding tags, so I just make a whole lot." He glanced down, as if suddenly remembering something. "Um, medic-san? You said that she would be able to wake up in a week or so—do you think that you could tell me when that is? I'd...like to talk to her." 

"Of course. We'll be slowly adjusting the seals over the course of this week, and when she wakes up will depend on her reaction, but I should imagine five days from now would be the most likely date. If you come in the day before that, I can give you an update on her status."

Naruto swallowed. "A-all right. Thanks. And...thanks for taking care of her."

The doctor touched the insignia of the medics' corps on his sleeve. "That is what I do, Uzumaki-san. No thanks are required."

* * *

He walked down the stairs determined to find Kakashi and extract promises of training. This took rather a shorter time than anticipated; Kakashi was, in fact, leaning against the wall next to the stairwell door, on the ground floor of the hospital.

Naruto made a double take at seeing him unexpectedly, then rounded on him. He was, predictably enough, reading a small book with an orange cover, which disappeared behind his back as soon as Naruto began speaking.

"Hey, sensei! Can you train me for the finals this month? I need to get stronger! I can probably even beat Neji right now, but some of those other guys are scary and then later I have to fight Sasuke and heaven knows he'll have come up with something insane."

Kakashi regarded him. "Unfortunately, Naruto, I will be occupied pretty much entirely between now and the tournament date. I have made some arrangements for your training, however, which I imagine you will not be averse to."

Naruto frowned. "What are you going to be busy with, sensei? I didn't think you had any duties other than teaching us, until we stopped being rookies anyway."

"I don't. In fact, I'll be training Sasuke."

"Hey!" said Naruto indignantly. He gave Kakashi a wounded look. "Why don't you have time to train me, then? How come you're spending all your time on Sasuke?"

Kakashi gave him a weary look. "Naruto, think for a moment. For one thing, Sasuke has awakened the second level of his Sharingan. This alone puts him above what was the average among the shinobi of the Uchiha clan. I am the only person alive who can properly instruct him in how to use it, unless he feels like seeking instruction from his brother." Naruto snorted involuntarily, and Kakashi grinned slightly. "Quite. If he is left to simply figure it out for himself, he may make a mistake that costs him heavily in battle. You saw some of that in his fight with Lee—I'm sure you noticed the state of his legs."

Naruto nodded unwillingly at that, and Kakashi continued mercilessly. "Even leaving aside that consideration, Sasuke is scheduled to fight Gaara of the Sand. Your own fight will be difficult and possibly dangerous, but Hyuuga Neji is likely at least to accept your surrender should you give it. The only thing you really have to lose is your pride. Gaara, on the other hand...you saw him fight in the preliminaries, and I'm sure you've heard about Hinata's experience in the forest by now. If Sasuke is unable to win his fight, he is quite likely to die."

"Yeah, I guess," Naruto grumbled. "But then what am I going to do? I can just work on stuff, but that won't be nearly as good. I need to get stronger too."

Kakashi grinned under his mask. "Naruto, have some faith in me. Did I not say that I had made arrangements? I've gotten you the opportunity for training that any other genin in Konoha would kill for. Of course, it's up to you to impress him enough that he'll keep teaching you, but the opportunity alone is priceless."

"Okay," said Naruto, looking dubious. "So where's this oh-so-great trainer of yours?"

"Right here, kid," said a low, gruff voice very near him to the side. Naruto spun about, alarmed, and recoiled from the man standing there, who he would have _sworn_ had been nowhere about just five seconds ago. This required that he take several frantic steps backward to regain his balance, which led into his slamming his head into the wall. He shook his head woozily as he tried to keep his eye on the man, who was laughing lazily.

"Not doing such a good job with the impressing me, kid," he said. Naruto overrode the pain in his head and his own alarm at being taken aback to step forward and point at him belligerently.

"Hey! You weren't anywhere around here and then you were there! Where the heck were you?"

The man's clothes were nothing like any shinobi outfit that Naruto had ever seen. He wore a bright red vest over a generic brown kimono, like some sort of particularly flamboyant stage performer. But there was a mesh-armor undershirt underneath, and he stood with a sort of unconscious readiness that lent him a dangerous air. He wore a hitai-ite, as well, though it was not immediately recognizable as such; it had strange horns, and the symbol on it was not any village's mark, but rather the word _oil_. Strange red lines ran down his face, like the tracks of tears, and that face was old, older than any other shinobi Naruto had seen except the Hokage. A long mane of white hair down his back lent point to the revelation of his age.

Naruto did not make any sort of connection between his age and the probable skill required to survive to so old and remain a force to be considered. He was too busy being annoyed at the newcomer's superior grin. 

He was laughing softly, and as he stopped he looked at Naruto as if he was a particularly interesting species of squirrel. "Looks like you need to work on your situational awareness, kid."

Naruto crossed his arms and sulked. "No I don't," he muttered. "You're just, like, the god of sneakiness. Came out of _nowhere_." 

The man stopped laughing. "Now that's dead wrong, kid, and I don't mean it as a figure of speech. It's true that I outclass you enough that you can't be expected to see me if I don't want to be seen, but that doesn't mean you can stop working on it. While there's still someone else in the world who is capable of sneaking up on you, even if you're fast asleep, you don't stop working on it. And if there isn't, you keep working on it anyway, just in case someone new can." He turned his attention to Kakashi. "This is the kid you wanted me to train? Doesn't exactly reek of genius. If he wasn't...him...then I wouldn't be giving him a second look."

Kakashi's insouciant air was still there, but there was a subtle deference behind it. That, more than anything else, made Naruto sit up and take notice of the man; the only other person he had ever seen Kakashi defer to, ever, was the Hokage. "He's more than he appears, Jiraiya-sama. And you were never one to credit genius much, were you?"

The man laughed, a very large sort of sound. "That's true. Well, I guess I'll give the kid a chance. See if he can keep up with me." He turned back to Naruto, making an obvious conscious effort to loom. "Feel lucky, kid! For the one who has consented to train you is none other than...." He glanced around, then deflated. "Drat, this corridor's too small. I can't do the proper introduction. Oh, well. Here goes." With no discernible motion or effort by the man, smoke billowed behind him; meanwhile, he did a ridiculous pirouette, his wooden sandals clattering on the floor, and continued. "I stand before you! The immortal toad sage of Mount Myoboku, strongest of the Three Shinobi of Legend, best-selling admirer of the female form, the legendary...Jiraiya!" He stood in a very strange pose, his hand outstretched toward Naruto, while fireworks with no visible source exploded behind him, grinning broadly.

Naruto's mouth dropped open as his mind threw all available resources behind attempting to discern what, precisely, had just happened. It took a moment for him to be able to reply.

"W-wait...Jiraiya, as in Sannin Jiraiya, the author of all those books Jiraiya? That's you?"

There was a further clatter of sandals as Jiraiya returned to a normal standing position. "Indeed, it is I! But," he was suddenly and entirely noiselessly several steps closer, leaning in toward Naruto, a lecherous grin on his face, "don't tell me that even such a young one has discovered the joy of my books? Truly, I am happy, to have introduced such an innocent to the wonders of the female form!"

Naruto backed away several steps, incidentally running into the wall again. His hands were raised to fend Jiraiya off, and he wore a mildly repelled expression. "What are you talking about? They're sealing manuals!"

In another eerily silent motion, Jiraiya backed up a few steps, and made an exaggerated sigh. "Ah, it appears I spoke too soon. But never mind! Such a state will not last forever! I will soon prevail!"

Naruto gaped at him.

* * *

After Kakashi had waved them both off, the strange old man—who Naruto was having a hard time believing to be the legendary Jiraiya, even taking his flashes of uncanny stealth into account—led Naruto out of the hospital and through the streets of Konoha to a destination which at first he refused to name. Naruto was confused, at first, when they arrived at a small pool fed by a man-high waterfall, pathed around and bridged; it was when he noticed the pool steaming gently that he connected it with the fences a short distance away, and realized that they were behind the expansive public baths.

Jiraiya turned to him with a broad grin. "All right, kid! So Kakashi tells me that you know something about fuinjutsu."

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, I—"

He was cut off before he could continue. "Great! So you may have worked with explosive tags, storage scrolls, and I would guess that the fox gives you some impressive chakra capacity, right?"

Naruto nodded cautiously.

"Good. But you know, kid, that later on if you keep studying fuinjutsu you're eventually going to have to do some fancy things that require more chakra control than just dumping chakra into a seal. So I want you to take off your clothes."

Naruto gaped at him. "What? What on Earth—how is that going to help my chakra control?"

Jiraiya grinned, rather wickedly. "Well, if you really want to leave them on, that's fine. It's just that I think you might prefer not to. Your first lesson is going to be refining your chakra control until you can stand on the surface of that pool without falling in."

Naruto's eyes widened for a moment, then he scowled. Without any fanfare or preparation, he stepped down onto the surface of the water, regulating his chakra flow instinctively. It was childishly easy; the surface of the water was entirely quiescent, except for the small ripples that danced across it from the waterfall on its other edge. He stared at Jiraiya challengingly from the center of the pool, hands on his hips.

"Was this supposed to be a challenge?"

Jiraiya looked at him, and one eyebrow might have lifted by a millimeter or so. "Huh. So Kakashi taught you that?"

Naruto nodded impatiently, crossing his arms.

Jiraiya frowned. "Then you can't know _that_ much about fuinjutsu yet. There just wouldn't be time. How much do you know?"

Naruto glowered at him. "Some six different varieties of exploding tag, three or four of sealing, the basic sorts of communications, a lot of theory—I was halfway through the level four sealing manuals when this Exam started. Oh, and a few random things I've come up with. And this." Without moving, he created a clone off to one side of the pool and swapped himself with it. A moment later, the clone glowed briefly and exploded—a small explosion, but enough to spatter water everywhere and send up a wave that drenched the ground around the pool. 

Jiraiya was not fazed; nor, apparently, was he _wet_ —Naruto didn't have the slightest idea how he had managed that, since the ground around him was spattered liberally with water. He raised an eyebrow at Naruto, turning to him as if nothing had happened.

"Since you apparently considered it relevant when I asked you about fuinjutsu, I'm going to assume that wasn't just an underpowered _bunshin daibakuha_."

Naruto felt suddenly foolish. "Uh, yeah...I never learned _daibakuha_ , but I figured out how to make a clone kind of imitate an exploding tag. I can do it with any clone, and depending on how much chakra I put into it the explosion can get a whole lot bigger than that. I've...never really tried to get the biggest I can, because...well, it was...kind of scary. If I overpower the clone just a bit I can get one to blow big enough to take down one of those really humongous trees in the Forest of Death."

Jiraiya nodded slowly. "Interesting. That's not a rookie genin's knowledge of fuinjutsu."

Naruto fidgeted. "Yeah...I started working on it when I was about nine or so. Right around after I started the Academy. Ojiisan—uh, Hokage-sama gave me the clearance, he said it would be helpful with...the fox."

"That's a good thing," said Jiraiya, beckoning Naruto forward and taking a scroll from some obscure pocket in his kimono. Naruto peered at it as he walked over, and saw the older man activating some sort of tag on it before he opened it. "Now, don't get the wrong idea—the _shikifuujin_ , Minato's seal on the Kyuubi, it's far beyond anything you can feel safe messing with right now. Even if the stakes weren't so high, you'd never get anywhere. But having a jinchuuriki know something about the seal on him can only be to the good. This scroll has quite a bit of stuff about sealing on it. You'll be studying from this on your own time. For the moment, though...." He paused, drumming his fingers on his thigh. "You seem to have a decent knowledge of the basic sorts of seals. Which is fine, if you want to make a living sitting in a workroom writing them out. Something tells me that's not you."

Naruto shook his head emphatically, and Jiraiya nodded. "Thought not. To use fuinjutsu in combat is an entirely different thing, and at the moment you don't have the first idea about it. It requires speed, precision and the ability to think on your feet. You are probably going to hate me after this training is over, but you will be at least not completely stupid about how to use fuinjutsu in combat. That alone should be enough to win you the Exam tournament, if the competition is at its usual level this year. Sound good?"

Naruto grinned broadly. "Yeah!"

Jiraiya grinned back at him. "Good! Now, as the first step, I want you to give me everything you're carrying on you with any seals on it."

Naruto's face went from anticipation to dismay quickly enough to give him muscle strain. "What? No! That's all my stuff, just about!"

Jiraiya seemed to be holding back laughter. "And that's a very promising sign! But remember what I just said? Speed, precision and the ability to think on your feet! Any idiot can use seals that are already written in combat. They're useful, but that's not what I'm teaching you. Until further notice, when I'm training you you can't use anything prepared ahead of time. Now hand them over."

Naruto grumbled as he began turning out his pockets and pouches. First there were the three storage scrolls he carried around when he wasn't specifically on a mission; then there was a multitude of tags of various types in the large pockets of his pants. Jiraiya took them without comment, until Naruto handed over his short stack of chakra tags.

He frowned, glancing at them and turning them over in one hand. "Kid, what are these things supposed to be?"

Naruto looked over to see what he held. "Um, those are some random things I came up with. Quick chakra refill. Some guy at the hospital told me that they were really inefficient, but I figure I'll stick with them, since I can afford it."

Jiraiya looked rather surprised and peered at the seals; then, suddenly, he started laughing. "Really? That's...that's truly...wow. You've tested these?"

Naruto scowled. "Yeah, I've tested them. They work fine, they just take a whole lot of chakra to charge up."

Jiraiya chuckled again as he put the tags down with the rest of Naruto's fuinjutsu-enhanced miscellanea. "You realize we're probably the only two people in the village who could charge one of these? Along with Sarutobi-sensei, perhaps, though I even doubt that nowadays."

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "You can? I'm pretty sure Kakashi couldn't, but I guess..."

Jiraiya nodded as he gestured at Naruto to continue unloading. "Oh, yeah. I have a high natural chakra capacity, and I've been training it up hard since I was younger, so I could...never mind. Anyway, I've got a higher capacity than anyone who's not a jinchuuriki. Or Hoshigaki Kisame, I suppose...anyway, by the time anyone normal gets a chakra capacity high enough to charge up one of these, they're no longer stupid enough to do chakra recharging that way. Congratulations, kid, you're unique."

Naruto ignored the last, having latched onto something else. "Hoshigaki Kisame? Who's that?"

Jiraiya glanced at him as he unloaded the last of his pockets, leaving them strangely empty. "He's very tall, has blue skin, looks like a shark, and carries a really large sword which is usually wrapped in white cloth. If you ever see him, get away as fast as you are physically capable of doing so. He has a chakra capacity nigh akin to yours, but unlike you, he is trained to utilize it to its maximum effectiveness."

Naruto frowned. "Chakra capacity like mine? Is he a...jinchuuriki...as well?"

Jiraiya shook his head. "No, that's one thing which I can guarantee he's not. No one knows where his capacity comes from. He's one of those guys who has carved his legend on the world, kid. People like the Five Kage, or Uchiha Itachi, or, well, my team. You know some of their names already, probably. But Hoshigaki Kisame is a nukenin of Kirigakure. If you ever see him, he's not going to have your best interests at heart."

Naruto nodded slowly. "Yeah..."

Jiraiya broke his brief reverie by clapping loudly. "All right! Confirm, everything with any seals on it off your person?"

Naruto nodded sourly.

"Good! Then here's your first lesson. Do you know _fuuka houin_?"

"Um, yeah, I guess," said Naruto slowly. "I mean, I've read the symbols and tried it out once on just a campfire. But I don't know it that well."

"Good enough! Take this." Jiraiya threw something at him. He caught it by reflex. On examination, it proved to be a scroll, wrapped around a sealing brush and a small vial of ink.

His next question turned into an indignant squawk as the old man, without so much as a handseal, shot a blast of fire at him.

He jumped frantically aside, and the fireball hit the ground where he had stood and burst in a wave of scorching-hot air. Naruto landed on his butt and scrambled backward, turning to glare at Jiraiya as he got his feet under him.

"Hey! What the hell was that for?"

Jiraiya only grinned at him and shot another fireball. Naruto jumped aside again—easily enough; these were slow attacks, not even in the same realm as the flamethrower that Orochimaru had kept hosing at him in the forest. They were still _fireballs_ , though, and Naruto had not even the slightest bit of desire to be hit by one.

"Speed and precision!" said Jiraiya, in between fireballs. Naruto was busy dodging, and so almost missed the words. "You pass the lesson when you manage to seal up one of the fireballs with _fuuka houin_! Best get started!"

Naruto's jaw dropped, and he stared at Jiraiya as if he had...well, as if he had suggested that Naruto learn the _fuuka houin_ by attempting to block a fireball with it. " _What?_ "

Jiraiya favored him with a particularly cheerful grin, right before fireballing him again. "This is the kind of thing a fuinjutsu master can do!"

Naruto muttered a curse and dodged again, then turned his attention to the scroll and supplies, which had remained forgotten in his left hand throughout the conversation. He clamped the brush in his teeth before trying to unroll the scroll and failing miserably, mostly due to the intermittent need to jump ten feet in order to dodge a katon jutsu. Finally, he succeeded in unrolling a foot or so of scroll, only to drop it as he made a clumsy dodge. The scroll fell, unrolling haphazardly with his grip on the end, and Jiraiya took gleeful advantage of his distraction to put fireballs close around all sides of him. He was finally forced to drop the end of the scroll in order to dodge properly, and it was several more iterations of dodge and dodge again before he could get to the body of the scroll and start gathering up the paper that had untidily uncoiled itself. All the while, Jiraiya kept sniping at him, looking insufferably cheerful.

Naruto made several more attempts at writing out the seal while dodging fireballs, but it was just fifteen different kinds of not happening. The only time he got as far as setting brush to paper, he fell over after a particularly close miss and ruined two feet of scroll. Finally, with a glare at the entirely unruffled legend who was still periodically fireballing him, he concentrated and formed a quartet of clones around him.

The clones scattered, Naruto with them. Jiraiya gave a theatrical sigh and shake of the head, and began shooting fireballs at five times the previous rate, targeting all of the doppelgangers. He showed no more visible exertion than he had when he was standing still and lecturing. The clones dodged around just as Naruto had, but still within fifteen seconds Naruto stumbled slightly as he was abruptly subjected to the sensation of mildly painful burns over the whole of his chest. He dodged the next fireball, jinking through the cloud of chakra smoke his popped clone had left behind, and decided to try a new approach. While Jiraiya aimed fireballs at the remaining clones, popping one, Naruto slapped the scroll down on the ground and spread it to a clean swath. The next fireball came at him not three seconds later, but instead of dodging it, Naruto summoned clones again, letting them take the impact of the technique.

Jiraiya immediately focused intently on the original Naruto, completely ignoring the few clones still moving around. One of them took one fireball, and Naruto summoned several more, but he was still forced to jump away several seconds later, leaving the scroll behind on the ground. His face was triumphant, though—he had successfully marked down the first four strokes, establishing the skeleton of the seal.

Jiraiya continued to focus his fire on Naruto himself, and one fireball hit home before he was able to dodge it. Naruto immediately dropped and rolled to put out the small fires that had taken root in his shirt, gritting his teeth through the pain of freshly-burned skin on stone paths. He jumped up and continued his dodging routine, only to suddenly receive a burst of memory that made his eyes widen. A clone had taken the opportunity to snatch up the brush that lay beside the scroll and continue the seal, and Jiraiya had noticed.

Only a moment later, the scroll and brush came flying at him, the former slightly charred along the bottom where the clone had not quite managed to shield it in time. Naruto caught them rather awkwardly and jumped away from another fireball, then made another swarm of clones, hoping to sneak in a bit of progress while Jiraiya cut them down. No such luck. The old man sent his fire straight at Naruto with a sort of bloody-minded obstinacy. Naruto passed the scroll off to a clone and jumped away. He was two jumps further on before he realized that there was no more fire targeting him; it was just a moment afterward when he assimilated the memories of three different clones who had died to provide momentary shelter to the one holding the scroll, followed quickly by those of the would-be scribe itself and the scroll flying back at his head.

This time, Naruto kept hold of the scroll and dodged back into the midst of his small remaining mob of clones, making another wave of them as he did so. Memories bombarded him of the clones on the periphery of the crowd dispersing in flames, but he was able to get another several strokes written, almost half completing the seal, before the fire threatened him again and he was forced to give his attention to evasion.

Jiraiya was outright grinning at him, and Naruto gritted his teeth as he continued to dodge frantically. A few clones still remained of the original mob that had shielded him, and he threw the scroll to one before jumping in front of it and spawning another swarm. The predictable fireballs began cutting through the mass of clones; Naruto growled and made more before the clone who was working on the seal was hit. He was starting to feel the edge of chakra fatigue now, and he pushed back against it with a snarl.

Suddenly, the fireballs were coming from another direction. Jiraiya had moved, somehow, without his noticing, and his fire now vectored in on the writing clone without interference. That clone yelped in alarm before tossing the scroll away; that was all it could do before it was dispersed. Its memories hit Naruto in jarring contrast to the constant wave of fiery death; this time, it was fiery death preceded by a lot of finicky seal work. Another clone leaped to the scroll where it had landed and retrieved it, and Naruto interposed himself again, creating another mob of clones. This time, instead of simply burning through the crowd, Jiraiya disappeared again, and the fireballs came from behind. The clone who was writing was dispersed, but managed to throw the scroll to one of the mob, which took up the task again, surrounded on all sides by its fellows. Fireballs came at it, but the clones started milling about, keeping as many as possible between Jiraiya and the scroll.

Finally it seemed that Jiraiya became impatient. A flurry of fireballs struck the clones at once, apparently from some three different locations, decimating them. A stray burst of memories alerted Naruto to where the scroll had landed, and his eyes widened in sudden anticipation—the clone that had dropped the scroll had been nearly finished with the seal. Only a few strokes remained.

A clone that was closer to it than Naruto himself had grabbed the scroll and started on the last few strokes. Naruto jumped forward and spawned another mob of clones around it, interdicting the predictable swarm of fireballs. It wasn't quite enough. Naruto cursed inwardly as the clones were all cut down. He must have been getting more tired than he had thought—he had underpowered that last usage, making a group of clones that was too small to give sufficient cover.

The seal was almost finished, and a barrage of fire was incoming on the clone and the scroll it held.

There was no time to create more clones to interfere. Naruto gritted his teeth and powered a sealless kawarimi. 

A familiar lurch and jerk, and suddenly the fire was surrounding _him_. He just had time to anticipate it before it struck him. There was a moment of not inconsiderable pain; then he had dived forward, out of the dwindling combined fireball, and did a rolling tumble along the ground, which incidentally extinguished the remaining fires in his clothes. Only a moment later, a burst of memory—for a change of pace, this time not triggered by a painful fiery death—alerted him to something behind him. He just had time to spin about and catch the scroll, verifying as he jumped aside from yet another volley that the seal was completed and waiting on the paper.

Jiraiya was giving him a good-natured grin as he kept shooting, and Naruto scowled at him as he picked his moment. The next shot came straight at his chest, and instead of dodging it, Naruto held the scroll open in front of him and dumped chakra into it. 

The fireball struck the seal, blazed brightly for a moment, then disappeared. No more followed it. Jiraiya was standing in the same place where he had begun the exercise, clapping slowly.

"Hey, you finally did it! Now just be warned that that was completely pathetic and you're going to have to start doing better if you want to do anything other than die a painful death using fuinjutsu in combat. You should have been able to do that without clones, in thirty seconds or less, without taking any hits. As it is...." He gestured at the boy.

Naruto glowered at the old man, his momentary exhilaration disappearing without trace. There was not much left of his shirt, and his pants had lost most of their pockets and still smoked sluggishly. The skin visible under the burned shirt was bright red, and hurt even under the light breeze; he could feel the fox's chakra working in him to heal the injuries. 

"I hate you, sensei."

* * *

Sakura wouldn't have stopped at the small roadside ramen stand if she hadn't seen Naruto there. She probably wouldn't have anyway, if said Naruto hadn't looked rather seriously injured. His pants were charred gray and looked fire-damaged, and his shirt was suspiciously unsullied, leading her to believe that he had replaced it. His normally blond hair was also matted and ashy, and after he sat down and ordered he dropped his head to the counter with a loud sigh.

She slipped in beside him, concern overriding her usual slight detachment from her admittedly occasionally rather scary teammate. "Naruto? What happened to you?"

He did not raise his head from the counter, his reply a grumble. "I don't know whether to thank Kakashi-sensei or set some sort of particularly nasty trap for him."

She caught her breath, startled. "Kakashi-sensei did this to you?"

Naruto shook his head. "No, but he got me training with the guy who did...got this Jiraiya guy to teach me seals and how to use them in combat. He's _sadistic_."

There was the noise of a clearing throat across the counter, and the proprietor, a cheerful-looking old man, poked Naruto with a ladle. "Hey, Naruto, aren't you going to introduce your friend?"

Naruto sat himself up with a groan. "Right, sorry. Sakura, this is Ichiraku Teuchi and somewhere in the back is Ichiraku Ayame, they run this place and they make the best ramen anywhere in the five nations. Teuchi-jiisan, my teammate, Haruno Sakura."

Sakura nodded to the man, who gave her a friendly grin. "Hey, friend of Naruto's is a friend of ours. You want to order something?"

Sakura nodded slowly, glancing over the menu above. "Uh...one miso, please."

The old man—Teuchi, she supposed—nodded and turned around, doing something enigmatic with the large pots of gently steaming broth behind the counter. A moment later, he had passed a bowl of ramen over the counter to Naruto, and was in the process of filling another. He winked at her.

"Yours'll come in just a moment, but Naruto tends to eat rather a lot at a time."

Sakura nodded, suppressing a grin, and turned back to Naruto, who was eating with remarkable speed. "So what sort of training are you doing?"

Naruto laid aside his chopsticks, having already finished his first bowl. "Seals," he said, with a groan. "Specifically, how to draw them while _under fire_ and not get burned. You can probably see I'm not doing so well."

Sakura nodded, suppressing the urge to grin. A moment later, Teuchi set a bowl of ramen in front of her; Sakura split the pair of chopsticks at her place and began eating. It was good enough, but her enthusiasm did not compare to Naruto's.

In the time it took for her to finish her one bowl, Naruto had polished off eight or so, apparently the whole of his order, and was looking rather more energetic.

"Wonderful stuff!" he said, his usual grin reoccupying his features. "Thanks a lot, Teuchi-jii!"

The elderly chef gave a good-natured wave in response, and Naruto slid out of his seat and made as if to go off. Then, suddenly, he froze, tensing.

Sakura spun about on her stool to see what Naruto had reacted to, and had to prevent herself from shrinking back in fear. The psychotic sand-wielding Suna redhead from the exams was standing there, arms crossed, staring at Naruto with a dead look in his eyes.

There was a tension in the air, layered within the silent belligerence of the two contestants, tangible in its pressure. Sakura shivered to feel it. Once again, it was made horrifyingly clear to her that compared to the great powers, she was _nothing_ , she was an insect that might only inconvenience them by her blood spattering their clothing. And—she saw—Naruto was facing down the terrifying Suna-nin, unfazed by the pressure. His face was set in a half-snarl, his teeth seeming to grow into fangs.

The other broke the silence first. "Where is Uchiha Sasuke?"

Sakura bit back a gasp, and Naruto shifted slightly. "Why do you want to know?" he asked, his voice flat and challenging.

"I'm going to kill him." The words were spoken without the slightest break in the other's tone, as if it was of no more significance than declaring an intent to eat lunch.

Naruto clenched his teeth. "You'll get your chance. Wait a month. But," and he grinned, or at least bared his teeth, "you can't beat Sasuke."

"I'm going to kill him." He calmly repeated the same words. "Just like the others."

Naruto shook his head. "You can't beat Sasuke. And," suddenly his eyes flashed red, and Sakura shivered as the power of his inner demon spread out over the world, touching a primal fear, "if you could, if you killed him, I would find you, no matter how far you ran, and defeat you, no matter how hard you fought, and kill you, no matter how much you begged." His snarl turned into a truly disturbing grin. "Try me."

There was a moment of silence after that, and the mask of the Suna-nin's face might have shifted a little. At length he spoke.

"I'm going to kill him. Then I guess I'll kill you." He paused, and there was a flare in the pressure around the two boys; despite her best efforts, Sakura shrank back into herself, instincts crying out to hide. It was almost like the power that burned inside Naruto when he fought to kill, but different; less infinitely powerful, contemptuous malice, and more an implacable, eternal antipathy, the force that would wait forever for the slightest chance to scour its enemies from the world.

Naruto was unfazed, and his bloody power flared to match it. The two genin— _forces of nature,_ her mind insisted, _invulnerable/invincible/indomitable gods/demons/lords_ —stared at each other, the one in a snarling rage, the other flatly and calmly murderous.

Then, without ceremony, the red-haired boy turned and walked away. The intolerable tension was broken, and only the familiar trace of terror leaked from Naruto's aura. Then, as he blew out a convulsive breath and sagged in relaxation, even that was gone.

There was the sound of a faint clatter behind them. Sakura turned, now that she was able to focus her attention on anything other than the confrontation before her, to see the ladle that Teuchi had held rocking slowly back and forth on the counter. Teuchi himself was still, his face white.

She looked back at Naruto and wavered for a moment before approaching him. Impressions clashed for a moment, the cheerful, hyperactive genin and the impossibly powerful force of nature; then it was resolved, as he shook his head with near-disgust and straightened. She took several hesitant steps forward.

"Ah...Naruto?"

Naruto did not immediately respond. She was about to try again when he spoke.

"He's like me."

She found herself nodding, a certainty beyond words driving her. They were alike. Of that there was no doubt. _Alike, both so far above humans as to call them gods_ —she shook her head to clear it.

"Alike...does that mean...?"

Naruto nodded. "He has one too. I don't know how, but...."

Sakura was silent, not knowing what to say.

Naruto spun about suddenly, his face alarmed. He looked at Teuchi, who was just relaxing from his frozen stance, and his eyes widened. "Oh no! Damn it—I'm sorry, Teuchi-jiisan, I shouldn't have—are you all right? Can you...?"

Teuchi seemed to shake himself, and smiled again, though there were shadows in his eyes and his face was weary. "I think I'm fine, Naruto-kun. That is one of the opponents you have to face?"

"I hope not. That would mean he beat Sasuke—uh, Uchiha Sasuke is my other teammate, I don't think you've ever met him."

Teuchi raised an eyebrow. "The young Uchiha? I see." He sighed. "You know, Naruto-kun, I've always attempted to support you in what you do, but at this point I can't really do anything but wish you good luck. I could wish that you would never need to face such a powerful opponent, but I know you will at some point. I can only hope earnestly that you prevail."

Naruto gave another of his trademark wide grins, perhaps a little effortfully. "Oh, you don't need to worry about me, jiisan, I'm fine for it." The smile lapsed. "I just wish that guy hadn't come here about it."

Teuchi chuckled. "Don't worry about me, Naruto-kun. I'm tougher than I look, and so is Ayame. Just make sure you're careful. You're the one going out there and fighting."

Naruto nodded, a bit melancholy. "Yeah. I...don't think you need to worry about that, jiisan. But thanks." He sagged a bit; this time his stance was more weary of body, than of soul. "Damn it, I have to meet Jiraiya-sensei again tomorrow morning, and he gave me this thing to read...." He contemplated a scroll of some sort, which he had pulled from his side. "I should get going. See you, Sakura. Bye, Teuchi-jiisan." 

Just like that, the last traces of the demonhost and the powerful shinobi were gone, and he was back to being the harried student who had eaten a ridiculous amount of ramen. The old man waved him off cheerily, and Sakura followed suit.

She sighed, and walked slowly back to her house.

* * *

"Don't worry, Sasuke, we're nearly there."

"Hn."

"Just another kilometer or so to go."

"Hn."

"Just up ahead now...."

"Hn."

"Right! Here we are! How are you feeling?"

"...Hn."

"What, you aren't excited to start training?"

"Now that we're here, why don't you tell me just what you're going to be teaching me that needs us to be so ridiculously far away?"

"Oh, nothing really. I just wanted to ensure that you wouldn't be distracted."

"We're disappearing off the face of the Earth for a month, not telling anyone anything about where we are, out in the middle of fucking _nowhere_ , because you wanted to keep me from getting distracted?"

"Yup! So, to training!"

"...Right. What's the plan?"

"Well, I was rather conflicted at first as to what to teach you. There are several things that would fit your style—I'll probably show you most of them eventually. For the moment, though...I was impressed by your fight with Lee."

"...okay?"

"Indeed. And that suggested to me some possible options. It's even better with your Sharingan—we can spend less time on teaching you the techniques and more on training how to use them. Activate your eyes and watch this."

"Hn. Beats what Naruto had to do."

"It does. Can you do it?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Good. I'm sure you can think of some applications."

"Well, it's useful, but I can't imagine that it'd be that great in combat. Escaping, maybe?"

"Ah, how little you know. Try to hit me.

"Oops, not quite. Again?

"Really, Sasuke-kun, you could be doing better right now.

"I trust I've made my point."

"...You _bastard_."

"And with sufficient training, you can do it too!"

"Point taken. Let's get started."

* * *

Naruto met Jiraiya at the same place, behind the back walls of the public baths. The old man was somewhat more serious than he had been the day before, and after exchanging minimal pleasantries, he bade Naruto sit down and pulled a sheet of paper from one sleeve, a large seal drawn on it.

"All right. What is this seal?"

"Uh, let's see...looks like a storage type."

Jiraiya rolled his eyes. "What _kind_ of storage type?"

Naruto leaned forward, looking more closely at the paper. "Looks like...a bomb trap? Except it's different...it's missing a bit around here." He waved at the sheet. "In the, uh, primary dimensional receiving secondary trigger zone."

"Correct. So what would this seal do?"

Naruto scratched his head. "Uh, it would...launch what you put in it out at speed? But it's different in some other places too...the secondary functional trigger is more like the one you'd see on a normal seal. Wait. It's just like a normal storage seal, except it shoots whatever you put in it straight at your face as soon as you get it out. Does this thing even have a point?"

Jiraiya grinned. "Not really. It's an exercise that I use to try to get students into the proper mentality about seal work. Last question. The piece that's missing in the primary dimensional receiving secondary trigger zone, what does it do?"

"Secondary trigger zone...what does a bomb trap do there? Uh, it'd have to be the communication bit, right? The detonator?"

"Also correct. Good job. Do you know why I asked you these questions?"

"No idea, sensei."

"Most students of fuinjutsu are basically training to be scribes. Which is a reasonably well-paying job, if you have access to a ninja village, and you can oftentimes partner with an off-duty or retired shinobi, someone with chakra to spare, and sell them. The problem is they aren't thinking in terms of what the seals do. They know what a storage seal does, and what a bomb trap does, but if you showed them something halfway between them like this, they'd be completely stumped."

Naruto frowned. "It's not that hard. You just need to figure out what the differences do."

"And many people are unable or unwilling to do that. There's a reason fuinjutsu is a relatively rare ability, and people like me or Orochimaru who can use it in combat are a rarity. It doesn't just take chakra, it takes a certain frame of mind. I know Kakashi can do some things with it, but there are other jounin around the village who could benefit from it quite a bit—if only just as a source of secondary income—and yet don't pursue it at all. You have that frame of mind, it appears. That means I can actually teach you."

Naruto grinned. "Fun! So what are we going to do today?"

Jiraiya put a hand to his chin, as if in thought. "Well, normally for the first hour or so I'd quiz you on your theory and provide direction for your independent study, but I'm guessing that after yesterday you didn't get much reading done."

Naruto looked sheepish. "I read a little...."

"Yup. So, consider yourself quizzed, and your direction on independent study is 'start doing it'. Now we move on to the next part of the lesson."

"What's that?"

Jiraiya grinned. "More combat fuinjutsu!"

Naruto groaned loudly, and Jiraiya raised a hand. "Don't worry, we'll only do a test exercise like yesterday maybe once every three or four days. The other times, you get to practice. Like I said, kid, yesterday you were kind of pathetic. You should be able to do a _fuuka houin_ without clones in thirty seconds or less. I plan to get you to that level before the Exam."

Naruto sighed. "Okay, but what's the point? I could just carry tags around with a _fuuka houin_ on them, and whatever else I need. Hell, it's not like if I'm ever in battle I'm going to be blocking fireballs with _fuuka houin_ , I'll just dodge them."

Jiraiya shook his head. "True, the _fuuka houin_ specifically is not that useful. The point, though, is not that you'd use _fuuka houin_ specifically, it's to train you to be able to write seals quickly at all. In combat you might not ever find a need to seal up a fireball, but there's certainly a use to, for instance, sealing up a persistent shield of flame with a thrown seal." Naruto nodded at that, thoughtful. Jiraiya grinned and continued. "So what we do for this lesson is practice. Draw out the _fuuka houin_ perfectly, as fast as you can, then do it again. Mix in some other seals on occasion, so you're not just learning that and nothing else. When you can do it in...one minute, sitting still, you'll be done for the day."

Naruto nodded, grumbling mildly, and pulled paper and brush from a scroll at his hip. Jiraiya watched him closely as he wrote out the first seal, which was more than a two-minute endeavor even sitting still and concentrating, then took several steps back, only glancing at him once in a while. Naruto continued repeating the _fuuka houin_ , occasionally mixing in some random other seal he knew, mostly explosive tags or ordinary storage seals. 

It was almost half an hour later when he looked up and realized Jiraiya was gone. Curious, and not at all averse to letting his sore hand settle a bit, Naruto put aside the scroll and stood, looking around. 

The old man seemed to be nowhere around, and Naruto frowned. He spawned two clones, and walked off in one direction, leaving them to cover the others.

It did not take him long to find the old man. He was sitting close along the fence that backed the outdoor baths, and seemed to be examining it for some reason. Naruto, confused, drew closer, and saw Jiraiya leaning toward the fence, writing furiously on a notepad he held in one hand, giving an occasional muffled giggle.

Naruto was developing a definite suspicion, at this point, as to what his strange teacher was doing. He took another few steps forward, and his suspicions were confirmed, as he saw that Jiraiya was peering through a hole in the fence, behind which were the sounds of bodies moving in water and feminine laughter. Jiraiya had a goofy grin on his face, and the pad seemed to have only the merest tithe of his attention. 

Naruto's jaw dropped, and a righteous rage began to bubble up in his chest. He pointed dramatically at the old man. "Pervert!"

* * *

It was a few days later that Naruto received a message from the doctor at the hospital with the date of Hinata's unsealing. Naruto brought it up with Jiraiya before they parted on the day beforehand. The old man was at first unresponsive to the idea of Naruto missing a day of training, but when he was told the reason he became immediately gleeful.

"Oh, of course! How could I deny you the opportunity? Being the first one there when she opens her eyes...bringing gifts...if you play your cards right, it could be very romantic!" This was with a wink and a broad leer.

Naruto could feel his face turning bright red. "What?! No, it's not like that!"

Jiraiya leaned close to him, a perverted grin on his face. "Ah, but it _could_ be!"

Naruto shook his head frantically. "No—that's not—shut up! She's just a friend!"

"You sure about that?"

"Yes, I'm sure!"

Jiraiya grinned. "All right, all right. Go see your...friend. I expect you here as soon as you're done with that."

Naruto nodded in relief, slowly deflating. "Thank you, sensei."

* * *

Hinata was due to be woken the next day. Naruto arrived at the hospital at the same early hour that he ordinarily trained with Jiraiya, despite the fact that the procedure was two hours later; he had nothing better to do. He discovered the problem with this strategy immediately: nothing was happening, the doctor who had invited him was nowhere nearby, and Hinata's room was locked. With a sigh, he sat against the wall across from her door and fished Jiraiya's instruction scroll from where it had displaced one of his storage scrolls at his hip. Naruto was quite impressed with the thing; it did not so much have sealing instructions written on it as it was itself the carrier of a large and surpassingly intricate sealing network that would display such information on demand. He could look for more information on a topic simply by indicating it in the text, and he was becoming growingly certain that it contained more information than it was allowing him to read at the moment.

He studied for nearly the entire two hours before a nurse walked up with a key and unlocked Hinata's door. Naruto put the scroll away and scrambled up, but she blocked his way into the room. 

"Sorry, kid. Going to be a procedure in here in a few minutes, can't have visitors mucking things up. You can see her afterward."

Though strangely enough she did not seem particularly hostile to him, Naruto did not attempt to argue; over the years he had stopped making the effort. Instead, he stood against the wall and waited, while the nurse entered the room and carried out some procedure on Hinata that he did not have the understanding to interpret. Only a few minutes later, the doctor appeared from down the hall and opened the door.

Seeing Naruto at the door, he nodded wordlessly and beckoned him in. The nurse looked at Naruto, then at the doctor, puzzlement on her face.

"Himura-san? The rule is no visitors present—"

The doctor—Himura somebody, apparently—shook his head. "He is a shinobi, and one skilled in fuinjutsu besides, and should by both qualifications understand the ability to remain still and silent and not distract. Isn't that so, Uzumaki-san?" Naruto nodded hastily. "In addition, he is a close friend of the young Hyuuga. This is not a sterile procedure, merely an unsealing. There will be no difficulty."

The nurse nodded after only a heartbeat's hesitation. "Very well. Her breathing is normal, but—"

What followed was a torrent of medic-speak that rapidly became incomprehensible to Naruto. More informative was the general calm of both the participants; it was clear that this was a routine thing. He watched, slightly on edge, but still and quiet.

After several moments, the nurse finished her summation, and Himura signaled her to begin. She flipped the gown off Hinata, leaving her covered in bandages and thin underwear—Naruto looked away in embarrassment, then, curious about the procedure, looked back, keeping his eyes determinedly on the seals. Himura was going closely over the seals, checking them for something; finishing this endeavor, he took sealed tags from a tray clipped to the bed and wrapped them around Hinata's arms and legs, overlapping the strands with the chakra seals. Himura laid a hand on the seals on each of her arms; the nurse touched the ones on her legs, and at his seal they powered them all simultaneously, with a mutual exclamation of "Fuin!"

The tags glowed slightly, and the sealed ink on them came alive and slithered, snakelike, onto the white paper strips that ran along Hinata's limbs, augmenting and altering the extant seals. Himura watched them like a hawk, his eyes darting from seal to seal; when the seals settled down after several seconds, he let out a breath.

"Looks to have worked. What's her chakra flow like?"

The nurse ran hands along Hinata's arms, her fingers just in contact with the seals. "Chakra flow through the extremities...seems to be fine. It's up at ten percent from three, and no abnormalities I can feel."

"What about her coils?"

"The flow is like a normal person would have, under throttling down to ten percent. Maybe a little greater." She frowned. "I...can't tell. I don't _feel_ anything, which is strange. I'd expect there to be some turbulence, with all that scarring."

"Odd...but probably good. Well, we can save that diagnostic for a little later. Safe to wake her up?"

"Give me one minute." The nurse closed her eyes and laid one hand on Hinata's shoulder, the other on her thigh. Her face relaxed into a vacant expression, and her eyes seemed to be twitching under her eyelids. 

Nearly a minute later, her eyes opened again, a look of surprise on her face. "Safe. Her chakra flow is just fine—in fact, it's better than it should be with the limiters on. Relaxing the core limits should be fine."

Himura nodded. "Good." He took another seal from the tray; this one went on her stomach. The nurse took up another position, one hand on Hinata's temple, one between her breasts, and took a deep breath.

"Start it."

Himura powered the new seal, but this time his hand remained in place, and the nurse provided a running commentary. "Five percent, fine...seven, fine...what? Is this at ten percent?"

Himura frowned and nodded. "Ten percent. Keep going?"

"Take it up to thirteen. Right now it's looking more like fifteen even though it should be ten, so actually going up to twenty percent might put too much through it."

"Understood." Himura did something else, and the chakra flow through the seal on Hinata's stomach changed. "Thirteen percent."

"And flow is...fine, but it looks for all the world like it's at twenty. Strange. She should be able to wake up." The nurse withdrew her hands, and Himura grabbed a vial of some liquid from a rack nearby and uncapped it. He grimaced momentarily, and waved the mouth of the vial around for a moment in the general vicinity of Hinata's face.

The quality of her breathing changed, and she shifted slightly. Naruto was suddenly and very acutely aware that she was lying on the bed mostly naked, something that had been easier to ignore when she lay deathly still. He focused himself determinedly on her face.

Her eyes were still covered by bandages, but her face gained an indefinable quality a moment later that made him sure that she was awake. A second after that, her arm moved weakly, as if trying to reach up to her face.

Himura stood near her head and cleared his throat. "Hyuuga-san? Can you hear me?"

Her head moved in a weak nod, and a moment later she spoke, her voice a whisper. "I hear you. W-where am I?"

"This is the Konoha Hospital. You have some damage to your chakra coils, which is why your eyes were sealed up. Are you in pain?"

She paused for a moment. "N-no...but I can't _move_." There was distaste in the word. "I can't see...that's very strange."

"Don't try to activate your eyes. They're sealed, and it might cause you pain. You should be able to move somewhat, but the chakra flow in your body is currently being restricted to only twenty percent of normal, so you'll be weak. Don't try to sit up."

Hinata nodded again, weakly. "Ah...how long will my eyes remain sealed?"

"We're just going to do some tests on your chakra flow, and then we should be able to unseal your eyes. Only a few minutes."

"All right. T-thank you...."

Himura nodded slowly, though Hinata could not see him, and looked at the nurse. She nodded back at him and placed one hand on Hinata's head and one on her stomach. "Hyuuga-san, I'm going to try to feel your chakra flow for a moment. Don't move." She closed her eyes and fell back into that strange meditative state, eyes twitching under their lids. After a moment, she spoke again, abstractedly. "Chakra flow normal...Hyuuga-san, could you please move your right arm?"

Hinata complied, and the nurse was quiet for several moments, then directed similar movements of Hinata's other limbs. It was a minute or so of this before she nodded and opened her eyes. "Chakra flow entirely normal, except that again it's just a bit too great for what the seals should be allowing. And there's a bit of turbulence now, but not half what I'd expected. How much damage is there?"

Hinata froze in her slightly restless movement. "D-damage?"

Himura gave the nurse a mildly reproving look. "Hyuuga-san, what is the last thing you remember?"

Hinata was still for a moment, then tensed up. "Neji-nii-san...I failed."

Himura paused briefly before he continued, his lips tight. "Do you remember using some tags to boost your chakra?"

At Hinata's nod, he went on. "There was too much chakra for your body. It tore up your coils. When we brought you in, we had to throttle your chakra flow down to three percent to keep it from doing more damage. You've been unconscious for a week."

Hinata gasped, but muffled it immediately. "All right...but what is this damage?"

"That's the strange thing. With the amount of scarring there was when we brought you in, there should be significant turbulence in your chakra system even at twenty percent, but Nakano-san isn't detecting it. As far as we can tell, quite a lot of the damage simply disappeared."

Hinata relaxed. "All right...Medic-san, I think I understand what is happening. Thank you."

Himura frowned, but continued. "Very well. At any rate, it appears your chakra flow is healthy, so we are going to remove the seals on your eyes. You will be able to see, but I would still not recommend trying to use your kekkei genkai."

Hinata nodded, and Himura untied a bandage at the side of her head, then carefully unwound the wraps around her eyes. Her hair fell to the side, messy and unbound. Her eyes were covered by white circles, engraved with more careful seals. They were taped to her face by more sealed lines; Himura pulled the tape off, then carefully lifted the seals away.

Hinata gasped. Her eyes were closed, but she did not seem to notice or care. "My eyes...Naruto-kun!"

Himura frowned. "Your eyes? What is wrong with them?"

"They...I should not say. Thank you." She opened her eyes, slowly, and looked over at Naruto. "N-Naruto-kun?"

Himura gave a tolerant grin. "Just one moment, Hyuuga-san, and we'll be finished. Nakano-san?"

The nurse nodded and stood over Hinata, placing one palm on either side of her head. She paused for a moment, slipping back into her strange trance; then her eyes opened, and she shrugged.

"It feels normal enough. Not as if I know what a Hyuuga's chakra flows are supposed to feel like around their eyes, but there's nothing obviously wrong."

Himura nodded. "Very well. Hyuuga-san, are you experiencing any discomfort?" 

Hinata shook her head. "I...I think I am fine. I can't move," and her face was frustrated, "but...I am not in pain."

"Good. Then I believe we are finished here, for the moment. Hyuuga-san, you will need to remain in bed for quite some time. I believe tomorrow we will begin some tests over the chakra seals, but we do not anticipate your being able to walk for another week at least...though that prediction may be in error, if the predictions of your coil damage were. In any event, we will leave you to your visit, Uzumaki-san, Hyuuga-san. Good day to you."

Himura gathered up a few sealed tags still remaining on various flat surfaces around the room and removed them. The nurse followed him out, and the noise of the door closing seemed louder than it should have been in the silence.

Naruto felt suddenly awkward. He stood up hurriedly, not looking at Hinata, and moved his chair from the far corner of the room to beside the bed. "...Hinata-chan? Are you all right?"

Hinata nodded, slowly. "I will recover. You...you got into the finals?"

Naruto nodded. "Yeah..." He fell silent again, fighting with himself for a moment, then took the plunge. "Hinata-chan...I'm sorry, I should have warned you about using too many tags at once—I didn't ever think about people using them like that, but now it looks like you'll have to stay in the hospital for like a month or so because of them, and I should have warned you, or thought about it, or—"

He cut himself off as Hinata shook her head emphatically, or as emphatically as one lying in a hospital bed could manage. "No! No, I knew...I could have guessed what would have happened. The Hyuuga...we know. It...is not so bad as the doctors think."

Naruto frowned. "Not so bad? What do you mean?"

Hinata shook her head. "The Hyuuga, for our jyuuken, we practice...very specific chakra control. Not like a medic's control, but more in the matter of forcing chakra out as densely as possible. Our channels are, ah, stronger, wider than other people's." She turned her eyes downward, as if hiding. "It's why I have chakra capacity like Sasuke-san's, even though I don't work nearly so hard...but the tags did not hurt me as much as they would a different person."

Naruto nodded, relieved, but his face remained downcast. "That's good, but...you're still—I'm sorry, Hinata-chan, but it...doesn't feel right, at all, if you're in here all hurt. I'm sorry. I feel like it's still my fault, or—" He shook his head, frustrated. "I should have done _something_ about it!"

Hinata's face seemed to waver between what might have been happiness and dismay. "No...you shouldn't blame yourself, Naruto-kun. You gave me the tags, and they let me keep fighting when Neji-nii-san blocked my chakra. I chose to use them. Please...don't feel guilty because of me...."

Naruto sighed. "I guess, but it's still...I don't know. I'm sorry."

Hinata shook her head again. "It wasn't your fault. You...." Her face darkened for a moment, but it passed, and she looked back up with more cheerfulness. "In the finals, do you know who you are fighting?"

Naruto's face went hard, and his stare was distant, looking more past Hinata than at her. "Hyuuga Neji."

Hinata gasped slightly, and she glanced down for a moment, but when she spoke her voice was composed. "I see. Naruto-kun...please, don't kill him."

Naruto looked at her with sudden surprise. "You...? I wasn't going to say, not today. Didn't want to..."

Hinata shook her head. "I can guess...you want to protect. That Oto-nin...." She trailed off. "But please. Don't kill him. Not—not on my behalf...."

Naruto nodded, fists clenched. "All right. If you want—but, I'm sorry, I just can't...he did that to you, tried to kill you..." His hands opened and closed helplessly. "I don't know. I won't kill him, but—I don't think I could go up against him in the arena without trying to hurt him pretty badly."

"Do not blame Neji-nii-san," said Hinata, sadly, her voice weak. "He is...hurting, in pain. His father died when he was young, and he blames the main family. Hizashi-oji...he was otou-sama's twin. When otou-sama killed a Kumo-nin who tried to kidnap me, they demanded otou-sama's life and his body, and Hizashi-oji was given in his place. I do not know why, I know otou-sama would have been willing to die to preserve the Leaf, but Hizashi-oji died instead. Neji-nii-san thinks that he was forced into it by the main branch."

Naruto sighed, closed his eyes, shook his head sharply. "And because of this he found it necessary to try to kill you? What did he think you had to do with it?"

Hinata shrugged helplessly. "I...I don't think he was really thinking that. But I am of the main branch. And yet I am so much weaker than he...I would not even have been able to injure him if I had not surprised him with your chakra tags. He resents it, that even with all his power, he is marked from birth to be...beneath me. Beneath the main branch. And with the seals...." She broke off, shuddering slightly.

"The seals?" Naruto frowned. "Ah—the Hyuuga juinjutsu...but don't they just seal the Byakugan once the bearer dies? Why does he have a problem with that?"

Hinata shook her head, almost angrily this time. "No. The seal—when it is activated, on the death of the bearer, it destroys the eyes, the head, the entire brain. Hyuuga—our brains are...not normal, they have a greater capacity to, to deal with all the information our eyes give us. So it all must be destroyed to avoid letting an enemy analyze it."

Naruto nodded, slightly puzzled at her sudden vehemence, and she went on. "The functions of the seal that attack the brain...can also be activated at will by main branch Hyuuga. It is to ensure that the main branch retain control. And—it is not always lethal, it can simply be very painful. So some of my...honorable elders...they use the seal casually. If they think that a branch member has...disrespected them...for instance, by bumping into them at the doorway, or walking past them in the garden without bowing their head...." Hinata shook her head. "They will punish them with great pain. And they cannot fight, no matter their strength, lest they simply be killed." Her face had hardened over the course of this little oration, and her voice was as angry as Naruto had ever heard it, cold as winter iron.

Naruto himself was hard pressed to stem the anger that rose up in him at Hinata's words. "They—that seal—and everyone except the main branch is marked with this?" He noticed, almost abstractly, that his fists had clenched in his lap, and his fingernails were digging into his palms.

Hinata nodded. "Everyone except me, my sister, my father and the...honorable elders. And either me or my sister must be marked eventually—the main branch is only a single line, for the past three generations. The...honorable elders are the last generation to have more than one member in the main branch."

Naruto spoke through clenched teeth. "That...that...I don't understand. That's wrong. I just...I don't know. And Neji's been living like that, huh?" He was silent for a moment, then gave a rough laugh. 

"All right. I won't kill him. Won't even hurt him too bad. I guess...I can see how that might make someone—yeah. Like that mark...." He shook his head. "All right. I'll beat him, but...wow."

Hinata nodded shakily, the cold steel that had gone into her face when she described the Hyuuga seal seeming to drain away. "Th-thank you, Naruto-kun....I'm worried about Neji-nii-san. He has himself all bound up in his thinking about fate...it's not good for him. He needs to start thinking more clearly, and...I think it could help if someone beats him. He is so strong, he has started thinking that it is his fate to win always, as if as some sort of compensation for being born branch. I tried, but...." Her shoulders moved minutely in a shrug. "I failed."

Naruto grinned, a bit of genuine humor in the expression. "Hey, if I can literally beat the stupid out of the guy, why not?" He shook his head. "All right. Uh, Hinata-chan...I'm sorry, but I have to meet the guy who's training me for the finals. I'll try to come back and visit you in a few days, but Jiraiya-sensei's kind of strict about it, so it might be a bit. Is...is there anything I could get for you when I come back? It's got to be kind of boring just lying around in here."

Hinata looked down, and her face turned a delicate shade of pink. "N-no, I can't think of anything right now, Naruto-kun. Thank you...." 

Naruto nodded, a little sheepishly, and slowly stood. "All right. Uh, goodbye, Hinata. I'll see you as soon as I can."

He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

* * *

"Ne, ero-sensei, why are we all the way out here?"

Jiraiya's eyebrow twitched as it always did when Naruto used that particular title. Naruto was less than sympathetic; as far as he was concerned, the old man could object once he stopped using Naruto's training as an excuse to sneak away and peek at women.

"I invite you to cease your yammering, gaki, and pay some attention, so that I can make it clear to you why we're all the way out here." Jiraiya stopped on a branch, and Naruto landed beside him. They were outside the village wall, which would ordinarily have required the Hokage's stamp on a mission assignment or special permission; however, it appeared that chuunin entry guards tended to find better things to do when the letter of their jobs required them to attempt to prevent Jiraiya from going anywhere. Now he jumped down to the ground, and Naruto followed.

"Okay, gaki, really fast, what are the parts of a basic assisted summoning seal?"

Naruto gave Jiraiya a confused look, but continued at his gesture. "Functional triggers and such. Primary dimensional receiving. Dimensional translocation initiator. Temporospatial objective analysis, and, uh, a bunch of primary dimensional stuff to tie it all together, because the dimensional and the temporospatial stuff don't always like each other."

Jiraiya rolled his eyes. "Close enough, if rough. All right, today we have a special lesson." He gestured around the clearing where they had landed. It seemed natural enough, but scattered in a circle around its periphery were a lot of large boulders set half in the ground, looking suspiciously clean and geometrically organized. Naruto glanced over at them with a frown.

"What are these about?"

"Well, first off, tell me what they are."

Naruto gave Jiraiya a dubious look, but jogged over to the nearest stone and examined it. In most respects it simply looked like an ordinary large boulder, common enough, that someone had for some reason polished and buried half in the ground. However, on the side that faced into the center of the clearing, it looked as if a large chunk of rock had been removed, making a perfectly flat plane facing upward and toward the center, and carved into it were deep notches, which curved about and combined to form....

Naruto opened his mouth. Closed it. Nothing came out. He turned back to Jiraiya.

"Is this whole clearing really some sort of giant sealing element? How does that even work?"

Jiraiya grinned back at him. "Figure it out."

Naruto glowered at him and turned back to the circle, peering at the lines carved into the stone he stood near, then glancing about at the others around the clearing. They made a circle of perhaps fifty yards' diameter, too far to see any but the closest in detail, but Naruto could verify that while otherwise they seemed to be ordinary large rocks, each one had been cut to a flat plane directed upward and toward the center of the circle, and he could make out similar carved notches on the nearest ones.

He returned to the nearest stone, and peered at the lines carved into it. As might have been expected of a bizarre sealing array apparently composed of large boulders, it had relatively little in common with the sorts of seals he knew, but there were tantalizing parallels. He frowned, and stepped over to the next stone, several yards away. Again, pieces were almost recognizable, but the whole didn't seem to mean anything. The next after that was a similar story. He turned to Jiraiya in exasperation. "What am I supposed to be seeing here?"

Jiraiya grinned. "Look again. Then do it some more." Naruto gave him a grumpy look and turned back to the stones, muttering about unhelpful teachers.

Instead of examining each of the thirty or so stones individually, he crossed his hands and willed power, and a small mob of clones appeared in a cloud of smoke. They scattered, each taking a different stone, and Naruto himself peered more closely at the first one he had examined, trying to remember the positions even of the elements that didn't make sense.

After thirty seconds or so, he felt a sudden burst of memory, from a clone that had arrived at its stone first and finished studying it. That precipitated a swarm. Two more dispersed, than another three, then seemingly all the rest at once. Naruto was momentarily overwhelmed by the influx. Pain erupted in his head; he groaned and leaned on the stone, one hand over his eyes.

Jiraiya chuckled from the sidelines, and Naruto growled at him wordlessly, fighting the headache. It took him a moment to integrate the memories, and when he did it took another moment to sort out which seals were on which stones. By that time the headache had largely disappeared. He straightened and glanced around at the stones with a glower of annoyance.

"It's got a bit of bootstrap to it, but a lot of it is just plain seals, except broken in half and put on different stones. Does someone actually expect this to work? It really doesn't seem like it should."

Jiraiya shrugged. "Well, obviously someone does. So what is it?"

Naruto looked irritated, but closed his eyes and concentrated. "It's kind of complicated...most of it...but wait, that makes...an assisted summoning seal. You couldn't have just told me that?" He gave his teacher a wounded look. Jiraiya ignored it.

"You wouldn't have gotten any good out of it that way, gaki. All right, so tell me. What's the summon?"

Naruto closed his eyes again, calling the stones to mind. "Objective analysis...it's another of those annoying objective-specific things. Um...I don't know the specific ones too well, but that's...snakes, I think? Yeah, and it's over...here." He indicated a stone.

Jiraiya nodded. "Good job. And where's the chakra sourcing on this coming from?"

Naruto frowned. "It's very strange, it's like some sort of combiner...yeah, that's what it is, a power combiner. But it's fed into some sort of really strange something that apparently then feeds into the assisted summoning. That's...from where it's placed, it looks like it should be an amplifier, but it's no amplifier I've ever seen anywhere in my life. It doesn't look like it does anything at all."

Jiraiya nodded. "Good enough. I'll cut you a break here, kid, since it's sure enough you've never seen anything like this before. What's the usual limit on assisted summoning?"

Naruto glanced up, puzzled. "Chakra usage. Because you're trying to make a summon link, a temporospatial thing, work with the dimensional things that you use with seals, so the chakra usage goes up really fast with the size of the thing you're summoning. So you can pretty much only do it with something, like, smaller than you."

"Correct again. So a ninja who can summon a boss with a ninjutsu—several of those in Konoha, Kakashi could, probably also that kid of Sarutobi-sensei's, and I know some of the clan heads can—could only get something fairly tiny with an assisted summoning seal. And to summon a boss via assisted summoning would probably require, well, you maybe, or Hoshigaki Kisame, or similar. What that bit of sealing in the rocks does is...ingenious, it's definitely his work. It uses the geometry of the stones in a really cumbersome way, but in the so doing it amplifies chakra about fifteen times more efficiently than anything else you can do in fuinjutsu. If you had enough people powering this, it could summon a boss."

Naruto was pensive. "Huh. Interesting...so why are we out here again?"

Jiraiya smiled, a bit thinly. "Good question! Hey, gaki, if you wanted to modify this seal so that when you power it, instead of doing a summoning, it completely messes up the surrounding, say, hundred yards, but leaves everything outside that intact, how would you do it?"

Naruto gave the old man a startled look, but turned back to the stones, his face thoughtful. "Hmm...good question. There's no easy way to make it into an explosive, you'd have to basically just rewrite it, and if this is dependent on the geometry of the stones I wouldn't want to try that. Some of the dimensional bits...hmm. Yeah, there's a couple of different ways, but...what I'd do is just swap out the whole primary dimensional receiving for a transmitting element. You could even do it without having to replace any stones. Then, if you poke the chakra source right...yeah." He glanced back up at Jiraiya. "You'd have a bunch of really pissed off snakes back wherever they live, but I don't summon snakes, so I have a hard time caring."

Jiraiya had one eyebrow raised, looking at Naruto with something new in his face. He spoke in a measured voice. "You don't mess around, do you, Naruto?"

Naruto shrugged. "You're the one asking. That's the best way."

Jiraiya looked very slightly amused, and nodded. He threw something else at Naruto. It was a small bundle of cloth, containing, strangely enough, a hammer and chisel. "All right. Do it."

Naruto froze suddenly and looked at the man. "You want me to..."

Jiraiya nodded. "Do it."

Naruto stared back at him for several seconds, and Jiraiya returned the look unblinkingly. Then, slowly, he nodded.

The alteration required changes to just over half the stones. Naruto worked his way carefully between them, cautious of shifting a stone and breaking the apparently delicate chakra amplification mechanism. Jiraiya followed him around the circle, peering over his shoulder, but did not interfere; when Naruto had finished his work—a matter of short, careful lines, easy to draw with the crude implements at hand—he took the tools back without comment.

"Congratulations, gaki," he said, jumping back up into the trees. Naruto followed. "First impromptu practical sealing examination, passed."

Naruto gave him a troubled look as they turned back toward Konoha. "So, sensei...is there a reason why we're leaving what is now a fairly nasty trap just lying around in the woods?"

There was a look on Jiraiya's face that Naruto had never seen before, a kind of sad thoughtfulness. "That amplifier...it's just like him. He casually does something completely impossible and treats it like it was ordinary. Only person I ever heard of who would invent a new method of chakra amplification instead of just doing his own boss summonings." He turned to Naruto with a sigh. "Even if that wasn't enough, he's the only snake summoner around with any plausible reason to be leaving something like that around. We're dealing with Orochimaru."

Naruto felt himself shudder, but shook it off, trying to forget the impossible despair of facing the rogue Sannin in the forest. "Why's he need something like that?"

Jiraiya shook his head. "He's planning something, kid, and I don't think it's going to involve sweetness and light for everyone. You may have messed up his plans with regard to Uchiha, but he's never only working on one level. Be wary, Naruto. Being near the Uchiha, and being jinchuuriki, you're more interesting to him than any random genin. And you might be a shoo-in for chuunin at this point, but you still do _not_ want to be interesting to Orochimaru. Keep an eye out."

Naruto nodded, suppressing another shudder. Jiraiya looked back over his shoulder with a wry grin.

"Hey, keep an eye out, but don't let it get to you. Orochimaru is the kind of threat that people like me and Sarutobi-sensei deal with. You've got your own problems."

Naruto nodded, but as they ran through the trees he still could not force down his apprehension.

* * *

"All right, Sasuke, I think we're done with this bit."

"What, you think I've had enough things thrown at me over the past two _weeks_? Why not more? I think I could see my way clear to dodging fireballs, maybe...."

"You probably could, but I think your competence with that particular style has grown to the point where another two weeks of practice won't help you all that dramatically. I'd like to teach you something else."

"Hn. What kind of thing?"

"Well, there was another thing I might have taught you, during this break, that I chose to postpone in favor of that style. We don't have enough time left to go through the whole technique, unfortunately, or rather I could let you copy it but you'd kill yourself the first time you tried to use it in combat. But we can start on some groundwork."

"...Wonderful. So what's this new thing?"

"Oh, you'll see. Ah, by the way, Sasuke, did you know that you're not actually a fire element?"

"...What? Of course I am. All the Uchiha are—were."

"No, actually, though most of them were, and the ones who weren't were just about universally dual elements with a strong secondary fire affinity. Which also describes you, Sasuke, hence your remarkable ability with fire. But just for fun, try this out."

"Chakra paper? All right...I suppose."

Crumple.

"Surprised?"

"...Yes. Secondary fire element, you say?"

"Correct. But that's not what we'll be working on. The lightning element can do many remarkable things, a few of which I'll be starting you to work on. The...intermediate stage I'll try to get you to before the tournament has its own uses, fairly powerful ones. Just keep in mind that you're working toward a goal, which I'm not going to show you right now, that's actually quite a bit more powerful than this."

"Well, I'm hardly going to say no."

"I thought not. Shall we begin?"

* * *

A week into their lessons, Jiraiya had made it clear to Naruto's tentative inquiry that he would not be involved in preparing Naruto specifically for the Exam. Naruto, while impressed by the sorts of fuinjutsu wizardry that the old man had been teaching him, was still less than convinced about its usefulness in open combat; he might be able to easily block minor fire jutsu with _fuuka houin_ by now, but all things considered he had better ways of doing that. So when he first found himself with free time, he threw himself into working out some surprises for the Hyuuga genius that did not involve fuinjutsu.

It had been three and a half weeks since he had started his training. Two since he had begun to work on his extracurricular activity. Two weeks of snatching every spare hour not spent with Jiraiya, asleep or visiting Hinata, working out new tricks. With the benefit of some strategic advice from that same Byakugan wielder as to the precise parameters of her family's eyes....

Naruto stood amid a field of craters and splintered wood, panting and sweaty, but his eyes were elated.

"Got it."

_There is no POSSIBLE way that Neji can beat this._

* * *

It was sundown, and the light struck the red rocks at a low angle, making long shadows across the broken land. Sasuke had no idea where this place was, other than 'generally north of Konoha', or why it alone of the surrounding hundred miles was bare earth and high stone rather than all-encompassing forest, but it certainly made a convenient place to train.

He was not sweating, nor tired, not really. But he breathed more deeply than he might have, prodigious chakra use having taken its momentary toll. More than that, his coils ached slightly with the effort of channeling unfamiliar energy—unfamiliar, but _right_ in a way he had never felt before.

Kakashi stood beside him, and the slight click of steel into scabbard signaled the end of their practice. The jounin was silent for a moment, staring into the sun, then slowly, deliberately, pulled his hitai-ite down over his one Sharingan eye.

"Only a few days left, Sasuke-kun. We'll take tomorrow to rest, then head back the day after. I must say, you've done quite well."

Sasuke was silent, pensive. His hand sought the base of his neck, rubbing over it, feeling the utter lack of pain or flaring power.

His voice, when he spoke, was conversational. "You know, it's a good thing Naruto got rid of that seal."

Kakashi raised his visible eyebrow. "True. What brought this to mind?"

Sasuke was silent for a moment later before he replied. "Because with these things...if I took it into my head to kill him, I think I actually could."

Kakashi chuckled slightly. "Been having doubts about your strength?"

Sasuke grinned, and there was savage joy and anticipation in it. "Not anymore."


	17. Contests: Fate

The streets in the village were quiet; Konoha seemed to have emptied itself. As if in compensation, the hum of crowds echoed up from the arena ahead of them and the road on its far side leading into the stands, making a strange kind of aural backdrop. The genin stood on another street, wide, dusty and deserted under the harsh summer sun; it led directly out onto the arena floor, bypassing the stands via a long, shadowed tunnel underneath.

Four of them walked in a row. Shino, off to one side, was tall, cloaked and silent, as usual. Hinata, next to him, moved gracefully and smoothly, nothing about her indicating that she had spent most of the previous month bedridden. In spite of this, Naruto was hovering just to her other side, looking anxious. Sakura walked beside Naruto, looking at the two with a slight grin on her face.

Naruto seemed to move in cycles, first anxiously hovering right at Hinata's side, then looking flustered and moving back, repeating twice a minute or so. After a few iterations of this, Hinata blushed slightly and giggled.

"Naruto-kun, I was more than capable of walking even before Himura-san would let me, and that was a week ago. You don't need to be so worried."

Naruto laughed nervously and scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, sorry...but it's the first time you've been out of the hospital, and I just—" He shook his head. "Sorry."

Hinata looked down, but there was a small smile on her face. "That has more to do with the fact that Himura-san does not understand the Hyuuga than with my health. Really...I'm fine, Naruto-kun." 

"Good!" Naruto returned a broad grin. "I...I'm glad you're doing better. I..." He paused for a moment, his mouth open, then shook his head and closed it again.

Shino glanced over at the two, his face unreadable as usual. "Hinata-san, I must confess to some curiosity about the speed of your recovery. Kurenai-sensei seemed to be under the impression that at the time of the tournament, you would still remain weaker than usual, yet I see no sign of such weakness."

Hinata ducked her head, seeming uncomfortable. "Ah...the doctor, Himura-san, he did not understand the differences between Hyuuga chakra systems and...the usual. He must have given Kurenai-sensei his diagnosis based on that."

Shino nodded. "I see. Well then, allow me to offer my congratulations on your recovery."

Hinata looked mortified. "Uh—ah...thank you, Shino-kun."

Shino gave her a look which might have been mildly amused. "Indeed."

They were nearing the gate in the arena wall. As they stepped into the shadow of the arena seats above, Sakura glanced around, then looked at Hinata.

"Hinata-san, we'd better get to the stands." She gestured at an opening in the wall of the tunnel, which led to stairs upward, lit by flickering fluorescent lights. 

Hinata nodded and followed Sakura over to the stairwell. As she reached it, she looked back over her shoulder and smiled. "Good luck, Naruto-kun, Shino-kun!"

Naruto grinned and waved, while Shino gave a reserved nod. In silence, they walked down the tunnel.

"Hn. Still need work on the whole awareness thing, I see."

Naruto narrowly avoided jumping out of his skin, instead whirling about, his hands snapping into position for a strike. Sasuke stood there, unruffled, smirking at him. His hands sat nonchalantly in his pockets, but he was wearing unfamiliar clothes, and on his left hip was a short, straight sword in a scabbard, protruding out behind him at an angle. On his other side was Kakashi, who was reading his usual bright orange book. Naruto glowered at Sasuke as he relaxed.

"Where the hell did you come from? And where were you all month?"

Sasuke looked smug. "Well, now, that would be telling. And as to where we were," he gave Kakashi an irritated look, "Kakashi-sensei decided that the best way to keep me from getting distracted was to take me out north for a day's run at top speed and not tell anyone about it."

Naruto grinned. "Yeah, that sounds like him. What did you work on?"

"That," said Sasuke, with a mock-supercilious look, "would be telling. I suppose you might figure it out before I show it to everyone, if you're quick enough."

Kakashi chose that moment to look over at Naruto, raising an eyebrow. "I see you survived your training."

Naruto laughed, scratching the back of his head. "Yeah. Did some good stuff. Pretty much just the fuinjutsu, though, the stuff I've got for this tournament is mostly mine."

Kakashi grinned. "Good! I'm sure it'll be quite the spectacle." The book he was holding disappeared, and he waved casually. "I'll be up in the stands. Good luck, both of you." Then, in a flash of motion, he was gone. Sasuke seemed to look particularly smug for a moment, before turning back to Naruto.

"Onward, then?"

Naruto grinned. "Indeed."

As they reached the inner gate, Naruto glanced around at the arena. Noise washed over them, the chatter of innumerable voices, though it did not seem as if any of the audience had noticed the three shinobi walking onto the field. The arena was large—more like a courtyard within the high surrounding walls than an arena in the traditional sense—and scattered around it were large boulders and small stands of trees. As he passed under the lintel of the inner gate, he felt a tingle pass over him, so faint as to be almost imaginary; he looked forward and back with a frown.

Shino had already begun to walk to the center of the field, where a man in a Konoha flak vest and headband stood next to a small knot of genin. Sasuke made as if to follow, but looked back when Naruto paused and began to look around.

"Coming, Naruto?"

Naruto shook his head distractedly. "One second...there's something odd here." He peered around, searching for the source of the feeling that had disturbed him. It had been almost unnoticeable, but it bore a faint similarity to...the feeling of chakra in an active seal. Just as he made that connection, he noticed the arena wall, which was seemingly entirely covered with seal work, extending all the way around the circle.

He stepped over to the wall and stared at the seals. They were close and tight, but seemed to repeat constantly, and they were nowhere near the complexity of any of the intricate masterworks he had found himself analyzing over the past month. Naruto, fascinated, began looking more closely, attempting to categorize the repeating bits of work, until he heard an impatient noise behind him.

Sasuke was staring at him with a raised eyebrow. "Is this really the time?"

Naruto stood up, grinning sheepishly, and turned back to Sasuke. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry. That's really cool, though."

Sasuke shook his head and beckoned Naruto back toward the arena center. Naruto followed, but almost as an afterthought spawned five clones along the wall. They spread out, intently examining the seal, and Naruto himself walked behind Sasuke toward the other genin.

They had congregated in the center of the field, the examiner a few paces away. It was a different person this time, Naruto noticed, and he wondered absently what had happened to the man who had proctored the preliminaries. Five of the genin had arrived; Shino had come in with him and Sasuke, and Ino and Shikamaru had been present already. Shikamaru was, predictably enough, lying on the ground staring upward, and Ino had apparently given up on making him pay attention, now sitting down next to him in exasperation. Sasuke and Naruto joined the growing clump to nods of acknowledgment from the two on the ground.

The proctor, a young man in a flak jacket who seemed to be in the inexplicable habit of gnawing on a senbon, was standing, seemingly relaxed, several paces to one side. When Naruto looked at him again, however, he noticed that his eyes were hooded and darted around the arena, and he kept one hand artfully near the shuriken holster at his side. Naruto frowned, wondering what the proctor might be worried about. There was a contingent from Suna in the arena along with the Kazekage, but Suna were allies of Konoha. And even if they had taken it into their minds to attack, they were outnumbered significantly by the Konoha nin, and the Kazekage himself was in the kage box within striking range of dozens of ANBU—not to mention the Hokage. Suna would have to be insane to strike at Konoha, and no other possible threat was remotely credible in the face of the majority of Konoha's ninja corps in one place.

_Well, something's sure as hell going to happen sometime, or else Orochimaru is an incompetent._ Naruto grimaced and shook his head, trying to throw off his paranoia.

There was a sound at the gate, and Naruto glanced around to see the three Suna-nin walking toward them. He tensed slightly at the sight of the red-haired boy—the other jinchuuriki—but forced himself to relax. His enemy was Hyuuga Neji; time enough for other grudges afterward.

The Suna genin stood off to one side, clumped together. Naruto, glancing at them, saw that the two oldest kept glancing about nervously, seeming to divide their apprehension equally between the cluster of Konoha-nin around them and their red-haired teammate. The Suna jinchuuriki, by contrast, planted himself in place near his teammates, crossed his arms, and proceeded to ignore everything.

Naruto had just began to become impatient when the examiner glanced up to the sun, then over at the gate. He frowned, and looked over at the clump of genin.

"We're ten minutes out. Do any of you people know where Hyuuga Neji might be?"

There was a general shaking of heads, and the examiner sighed. "Wonderful. He's first, too. Well, we'll have to see."

Naruto sighed, glancing around. "Hyuuga bastard can't even be on time for his own fight? Great."

Sasuke, beside him, sniffed, mock-haughtily. "Hn. You'd never see an Uchiha engage in such behavior."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Where is he?"

Ino, sitting on the ground, began whispering something under her breath; Naruto couldn't quite catch the words, but the gist seemed to consist of imprecations against lazy and/or habitually tardy people. Naruto received the definite impression that she wasn't really referring to Neji, which was only reinforced by Shikamaru shifting and muttering something annoyed. The remainder of the genin remained silent; the Suna-nin were wary of everyone else in the arena, and no one else seemed inclined to conversation.

After a rather tense wait, punctuated with the proctor glancing around exasperatedly, Naruto noticed more movement at the gate, and the tall Hyuuga stepped out into the sunlight. He ignored the eyes on him, and simply walked over to the center, taking up a position isolated from the rest of the group and staring at the examiner.

Said examiner gave him an annoyed look. "Hyuuga Neji. Good. All of our competitors now, at last, being present, kindly line up and hear the rules."

There was a bit of a shuffle as the genin arranged themselves in a line. The examiner glanced them over with a slight frown, then nodded.

"Good. All right, people, the fight rules are the same as for the preliminaries. Which is to say, there aren't much of any. Do what you want to each other, use what you like. There's a shield around the walls of the arena, so you don't have to worry about collateral damage in the crowd. If victory is obvious but you're still trying to kill each other, I may intervene to prevent unnecessary deaths. The tournament is arranged as single elimination, and the matches are as follows: first, Uzumaki Naruto versus Hyuuga Neji, second, Aburame Shino versus Yamanaka Ino, third, Nara Shikamaru versus, uh, Temari, fourth, Gaara versus Uchiha Sasuke." He glanced up and down the row, verifying that each competitor was present.

"All right, everyone's here. So, in case you missed it, the purpose of this Exam is to determine promotions to the rank of chuunin. Of course, ultimately this is a matter for your own kage, but barring exceptional circumstances the opinion of the judges here pretty much determines it. So remember, you could lose your first match and still get promoted, if you impress the judges. Or you could win the whole thing and still miss promotion. It's not just about power, though that's a big part of it; it's about who would be an asset to their village if they were promoted. Fight with that in mind."

"Troublesome...let's just get it over with, already," grumbled Shikamaru, slouched in his place with his hands in his pockets as usual. This drew a scathing look from the Suna kunoichi, Temari, who stood next to him, and a chuckle from the examiner.

"All right, then." He gestured to an alcove balcony inset in the wall of the stadium, off to one side, and a door below it. "All the competitors who aren't in this round, please go to the balcony. Uzumaki Naruto, Hyuuga Neji, stay."

The rest of the genin peeled off from the line and moved toward the staircase, some slowly, some with alacrity. Sasuke glanced over at Naruto as he walked off, and favored him with a smirk and a wave. Naruto grinned in response.

The examiner glanced around, and noticed the five clones Naruto had set to examine the seals around the arena walls. He looked over at Naruto.

"Uzumaki-san, your match has not yet begun, and having clones on the field when it begins is outside the rules. Disperse them, please."

Naruto looked up, mildly startled, and nodded. A single clone formed and dispersed itself, distributing the memories of that instruction to the studying clones, which were by now just about evenly distributed around the arena wall. They dispersed a moment later, filling Naruto's head with information about the seals on the walls; he quickly filed that away for later, forcing it down.

This left Naruto and Neji alone on the field with the examiner. The Hyuuga turned to look at Naruto for the first time, and gave him a long, unfriendly stare. Naruto returned it with equal ill will, almost snarling, instinctively crouching slightly as he opened the seal within him; a filigree of death patterned the arena and his opponent as a rush of power flowed inside his mind, ready to be tapped. The fight might well have begun right then, if the examiner had not cleared his throat.

The tension cleared slightly, and Naruto straightened and turned back to the older shinobi. He raised one eyebrow, and motioned to the two lines that marked the fighters' starting positions. Naruto moved over to one of these, keeping one eye on his opponent. The Hyuuga stood in his designated position, disdaining any sort of stance, but his eyes had flared active, and he glared at Naruto contemptuously.

The examiner waved a hand desultorily in their general direction; he had taken several steps back, and appeared poised to retreat even further. "All right, you two know the drill. Begin." He jumped backward, putting at least a hundred feet between him and the combatants.

For all the examiner's caution, though, there was remarkably little reaction to the formal beginning of the match. Naruto tensed slightly, his weight shifting forward, and saw Neji do the same; neither, however, seemed inclined to attack just yet.

After a moment of that silent staring match, Neji snorted in disdain. "You cannot win this match," he said, his gaze remaining fixed on Naruto despite his expanded field of vision. "Whatever tricks you might have learned, they cannot avail you against someone who is truly strong. You have threatened to kill me on this field, but you need not fear. I will defeat you, and I will leave you alive that you might contemplate the differences between us."

Naruto snarled, his lips curling over teeth which had grown longer and sharper than their proper shape; a part of him alarmed at that, and sought to push down the fox's influence, but it was a bitter task against the weight of his anger. "Keep telling yourself that, bastard."

Neji's eyes widened further, the veins around them swelling. "So you still maintain some vestige of deluded hope. It will not last. Your fate is still weakness. Regardless of how you struggle, regardless of what tricks you attempt, you cannot defeat me." He smiled humorlessly, bitterly. "It is foreseen."

Naruto clenched his teeth, which had grown further despite his efforts. Flickers of red licked around his hands, and instincts not his urged him to form them into claws and _rend_. The lines were dark and spindly on the world; he could see them on Neji's body, on his face, and he ached to slice along them, to silence the arrogant Hyuuga who had hurt Hinata. He could foresee it, could already see the older boy falling apart, spurting blood—

He cut that thought off before it could continue, and concentrated for a moment, closing his eyes to hold back the fox's influence. _I promised not to kill him. Remember. Hinata wants him alive._

He opened his eyes, having gained some control, and set his hands in a cross. With barely a thought, five clones surrounded him; Neji's face lost its arrogance and set itself in a blank mask, as the Hyuuga stepped forward and fell into a familiar stance. He was no longer taunting; every motion he made was purposeful, efficient.

Naruto was not fazed. He charged with a roar, his clones around him. It was an effort to hold his speed down to what the clones, not boosted, could maintain, but he managed to keep himself inside the crowd, anonymous even to his enemy's eyes. His first experiment with Hinata had determined that even the Byakugan, the most powerful technique of insight still alive in the world, could not quickly distinguish a shadow clone from its maker.

Neji did not take the bait. Before Naruto or his clones had closed halfway, he brought one hand forward as if to strike the air open-handed. His lips moved in the name of a technique, but Naruto could not hear him; a ripple of force had shot out from that hand, catching the whole group. The clones were dispersed instantly, amid memories of sudden pressure and crushing force. Naruto himself was caught up as if by the fist of a giant and thrown backward. The pressure hammered on his ears, making them ring, deafening him. He ignored that—nowhere near as strong as the effects of some of his own explosions—and flipped over in the air, only just managing to land on his feet almost twice as far from Neji as he had been.

Neji had returned to his stance, his face masked. Naruto's ears had already cleared, and as he walked forward again, slowly, Neji spoke, his voice as devoid of any emotion as his face.

"I warned you that your tricks would not avail you. I know better than to allow your clones to approach me. You will not find me so easy to defeat as the Inuzuka."

Naruto scowled and crossed his hands again. This time, more clones formed, almost four times as many, in an arc of almost a half-circle all around the Hyuuga. They all charged forward, Naruto with them, this time at a dead sprint.

Neji was not as overwhelmed as Naruto had hoped. He danced backward, his motions eerily reminiscent of Hinata's when they practiced together, and repeated his technique. This time, it was directed at one end of the line of clones, away from Naruto, and he could hear the Hyuuga mutter the mnemonic name—"Hakke kuushou!"

A clump of clones disappeared at once, and Naruto tuned out the burst of memories that came with their demise. The remaining clones pushed forward, but to no effect; Neji expertly kept the distance open, using three more waves of force to dispose of the entire group. This time Naruto managed to weave between the attacks, and so avoided being thrown across the field again; however, he was no closer to Neji than he had been before, and he was not making any progress.

Neji had reassumed his neutral stance, and his concentrated mask lapsed, just a fraction, into a sort of contempt.

"Is that it? Your only trick? You can create clones, and they can explode. Perhaps that would be sufficient, against shinobi of no skill. If you seek to ever advance, you will need to learn eventually that brute force is not enough!"

Naruto growled, the fox's influence again urging him to _rip tear kill_ ; he pushed it back with an effort, and shook his head abruptly.

"You think so? All right." He smiled, and for all his efforts it was a predatory look. "I'll try finesse now."

In another quick burst of chakra, he had created another small mob of clones. They charged as one, just as the last attempts had. Naruto, though, was not giving his all to the attack with his clones; he stayed in the middle of the pack, keeping his eye on Neji, and focusing his chakra.

A look of greater contempt flashed across Neji's face as he saw the horde coming. Naruto could see him preparing, moving backward, and concentrating to use his attack again; this time, he preempted him. Before Neji could release the blow, Naruto prepared to apply the results of his second experiment with Hinata—

—he slammed his hands together into a ram seal, forcing out all the chakra he could hold, and put all his breath into a deafening shout of "KAI!"—

—namely, that the Byakugan, for all its advantages over mere mortal eyes, was still subject to flash blindness.

The sudden confusion and fear that flashed across Neji's face, and his aimless casting around where before he had always stared straight at his opponent as if he could defeat him with the force of his glare, told Naruto all he needed to know. His clones spread out on cue, making more targets, keeping them all from dying to a single lucky empty palm, and Neji's desperate attack, launched vaguely in Naruto's direction, caught up only three of them. Naruto grinned wolfishly as the rest of the clones closed in, knowing he had won.

Then the fear on Neji's face flashed through resignation to resolve. Muttering something Naruto couldn't quite hear, he threw himself into a sudden spin. Just as the first of the clones approached him, blue chakra flared out from the Hyuuga's body, forming itself into a rapidly spinning dome all around him; the first clone, which had already thrown itself forward in order to tackle the Hyuuga before detonating, ran into the wall and was violently thrown aside, to collide with another clone and disperse. Then the remainder of the clones arrived. Some charged into the dome only to disperse immediately, some were thrown away to disperse on landing; two detonated themselves outside the shield, but for all the effect they had they might as well have simply dispersed themselves normally.

Naruto, still at a distance, watched incredulously as the dome wavered and collapsed to reveal Neji, inside it, coming out of his spin to stare challengingly at Naruto. His eyes had obviously cleared, from the pinpoint accuracy of his glare; he was perhaps breathing slightly harder than he had been, but he stood steady still in the neutral stance of jyuuken.

Neji's lip curled as he regained his poise, and he drew himself up and schooled his features into a mask of disdain, though anger still shone through in his voice. "Tricks! Regardless of what you might have learned—you cannot take me off guard! You cannot defeat me!"

Naruto stared warily at the Hyuuga. That move matched Hinata's cursory description of the _kaiten_ , the most powerful defensive technique of the Hyuuga clan, but it couldn't have been—she had been very and bitterly clear that it was a technique taught only to members of the main branch. Not even to her, yet, though she knew the theory behind it; she had only mentioned it in passing, and Naruto hadn't followed up, thinking that it wouldn't be relevant for the fight against the branch-house Neji.

_What should I do? If that was the Kaiten, then I probably can't get through it...but it's got to be hard on him. But it can't be—he wouldn't have learned it, he'd have to have reconstructed it himself. No one's that good._

Naruto frowned at that. _Well, whichever it is, he can sure enough do it blind. No point in trying the flash again...unless I want to just try to run him out of chakra, but that's cruddy. I want to beat this guy on his own terms._ He smiled thinly. _All right, brute force it is, then. And I can't wait to see the expression on the guy's face._

He looked at Neji with a twisted grin. "All right, tried that!" he called. "Going back to brute force now!"

He crossed his hands again and _concentrated_ , chakra moving according to his will in great floods, where before he had used only the smallest of streams. A blue haze began to coalesce around his body, and he saw Neji's eyes widen, just a fraction, and his lips tighten into a thin line. He released it all at once.

"TAJUU KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUTSU!"

There was a great cloud of smoke, and a thunder of sudden creation. It was as if a wave exploded outward from where he stood, and as it passed the air was filled with white chakra smoke and the ground was broken flat under hundreds of identical blue sandals. It took only moments for the effect to trail off, wasting the last of its efforts against the sealed walls of the arena. 

Where it had passed, the arena floor was no longer visible. It was carpeted thickly with clones, all surrounding the single bare space around Hyuuga Neji, and the older genin's eyes flared as he took them in. Neji was glancing around, with tiny, almost imperceptible movements of his head, but Naruto read volumes in them. He smiled again, no longer mockingly but with pure anticipation, and relaxed in the strain of holding down the fox's influence, letting the lines on his cheeks deepen and his teeth grow. The Hyuuga was afraid.

The clones had already been an oppressive presence in the arena merely by the noise of their breathing, their standing and shuffling around. When they charged, the noise redoubled, and that was before one decided to shout its anger at the Hyuuga. In a moment they were all doing it; any coherent words were lost in the overwhelming sound that echoed outward, deafening. Naruto, in the last moment that he still had a line of sight to Neji in the mob's center, saw him wince and clench his teeth in discomfort; then, before the first clones could enter their attack radius, he forced himself into a spin again, and the blue dome of chakra sprang up over him, impenetrable.

A moment later the wave of clones reached him, and even the previous noise was made as nothing by the wall of sound that swept out from the center as clones began to detonate themselves just outside Neji's defense. Naruto ignored the sound with the aplomb of someone very practiced at taking explosive techniques at close range; more problematic to him was the overwhelming blast of memories that rolled over him as each explosion took out dozens of clones that had charged in too closely packed. So many were there, however, and so quickly they closed, that even the detonations of the one clone in ten that managed to reach the center were more like constant, cacophonous thunder than individual sounds.

Naruto stood back from the crowd of clones, his hands over his eyes as he concentrated, monitoring the situation by the flashes of memory he received. Though he had summoned a crowd of clones almost as large as he was capable of, large enough to fill the arena, so quickly were they spending themselves on Neji's wall that after not even ten seconds of engagement there were noticeably fewer clones in the ring. The memories of his attacking clones were all the same; either they had been caught up in a different clone's explosion and lost pointlessly—there were fewer of those, now, as the density of clones in the arena fell—or they had closed to just outside the spinning dome and put all the chakra that made them into a detonation. The strength of the dome, however, seemed unaffected by the actions of the clones; whether it had had a few seconds respite, or whether five clones had just then exploded around it at once, it seemed indifferent.

Naruto frowned. The dome was shrinking over time, leaving a trail of plowed earth behind it, and if he kept this up for as long as he could then Neji should eventually simply cease his technique out of exhaustion. _I didn't want to beat him that way, but...I guess I'll take it, if I have to. That's one impressive defense._

The constant thunder had been going on for almost a minute, now, and Naruto had adjusted to the demands of integrating his memories enough that he could look at the fight with his own eyes as well. The crowd had collectively plugged its ears, but the spectators closer to the arena seemed to be staring with fascination at the center of the ring, the point where brilliant flashes and thunder contended against the technique which Naruto was becoming steadily more certain was indeed the greatest defense of the Hyuuga clan. Perhaps a quarter of the original mob of clones remained, but Neji's dome had shrunk by more than half its diameter, and Naruto grinned wolfishly. In no more than a few seconds, the Hyuuga would be forced to drop his defense by the simple fact of having insufficient space within it, and while he had promised not to _kill_ Hinata's cousin, he found himself looking forward immensely to beating the contempt out of him.

Then, something changed. The few clones to see it barely had time to notice the dome flare bright before it suddenly surged outward, growing to five times its size in an instant; those caught by it, almost half the remaining mob, were thrown outward, to disperse as they fell. As if the potency of the defense had been spent in that moment, it then dissolved, revealing the Hyuuga, panting as he dropped his spin and grounded himself again, seeming to shake his head slightly as he looked up with defiance in his face.

The clones around him charged as one, but before they could approach, Neji crouched low and jumped, higher than Naruto could have perhaps even with the fox's boost. He peaked high above the arena, approaching the height of the higher stands, and as he began to fall all the clones that could see him ran toward the point where his path intersected the ground.

They were entirely unprepared when Neji, still twenty feet up, did _something_ difficult to see, and a wave of chakra shot out to crush them all against the arena floor. They were dispersed in an instant. Naruto, disoriented by the sudden wave of memories, looked up again only to see that the release had lofted Neji skyward again. His new trajectory brought him to a point directly above Naruto himself, now devoid of clones.

Naruto knew, intellectually, that the next few events happened very quickly indeed, but as he experienced them it seemed that time had decided to take a vacation. Neji had curled his arms across his chest, and as he fell, he flung them out wide, as if scattering shuriken. Instead of blades, though, another wave of chakra shot out, straight down, visible in its refraction of the sunlight from above. It was stronger than the last one, and Naruto had the wince-inducing memories of his clones testifying to that technique's power. In a moment of sudden fear, he realized that that wave might well be able to put him down long enough for Neji to finish the fight.

It was too late to dodge; there were no clones on the field to substitute with, and he was not yet fast enough at _shunshin_. Instead, Naruto consciously drew out the fox's power, more than before. The lines, which had faded into the background as Naruto ignored them, burned again black and _wrong_ in his sight, tracing across the ground, his enemy, himself. He could foresee it, he only needed to call the slicing power of the cloak to him and it would leap out, make those weaknesses of the flesh tear the Hyuuga apart—but instead, he only pushed as much of the red power as he could into his right hand. The wave approached, and he slammed power out through his arm and punched upward with all his strength.

He felt a moment's resistance, as if he had hit thick, tight-stretched cloth, and then the wave seemed to split around his arm. There was a loud concussion, hammering his already-abused ears, and a sudden feeling of emptiness in his core, but Neji's technique flowed around him and pounded the arena floor, leaving him upright and swaying slightly, but undamaged.

He had only an instant to process his success before Neji himself landed in a crouch directly before him. His momentary elation turned to alarm as the Hyuuga launched himself forward, snarling. He saw the stroke coming, but he was unable to bring his arms up in time, and Neji's open palm smashed into his stomach like a sledgehammer.

Naruto found himself flying backward, a burning, racking pain throughout the whole middle of his body. It was worse than anything else he could remember, worse even then being beaten half to death at the age of nine. Abstractedly, he noticed that he was crashing to the ground, almost landing on his feet but not quite, that he was skidding through the earth almost to the wall, that he lay now still and helpless at the end of a long trench carved in the arena floor, but he could not quite bring himself to care. All his attention was forcibly drawn to the hot pokers someone kept stabbing him through the gut with.

He could only breathe heavily, for a time, until the pain abated a fraction. Then he became aware of the Kyuubi's chakra working inside him again, and he had never been more grateful for it. It contended, for a moment, with some harsh interloping force, but that could not compete; it was burned out in seconds, and the pain dwindled from unimaginable to merely quite severe.

As he again became aware of the world around him, he noted that Neji had approached, standing perhaps halfway along the trench Naruto had carved with his passing, and he was speaking.

"I must commend you. You have fought quite strongly for a shinobi not even a year out of the Academy. But it was never possible for you to win this fight. You were not born to be my equal in strength. No matter how hard you might have tried...." He trailed off, and when he finished, he seemed almost to be speaking to himself. "No one can overcome their fate."

He was silent for a moment, pensive, then straightened and looked off to one side. "Examiner! You should call the win. If he is not given treatment— _what?_ "

He spun back to stare at Naruto, his eyes flashing again into full activation from where they had relaxed. Naruto, for his part, had one hand clamped over his stomach, which had healed itself to a degree but still ached fiercely and burned with every breath; he had laboriously rolled over, then come up to one knee, and as Neji watched incredulously, he slowly stood, glaring at the Hyuuga.

"Say that"—he gasped, coughed, at the strain, and droplets of blood spattered from his mouth—"to my face...you bastard!"

Neji's mouth was slightly open, and his face was unabashedly shocked. It took him almost a full second to reply, his voice weak. "Impossible...."

Naruto grinned ferally. The pain was beginning to abate, and the healing went faster as he forced out more power and let it play over his body. "Apparently not."

Neji shook his head slowly, as if in disbelief. "You can stand...impressive." His posture firmed itself again, and the mask of concentration formed over his face. "However, regardless of your fortitude, that strike must have severely damaged your organs and your abdominal chakra points. To fight would only degrade them further. You should surrender, or there is a very real chance that you will not survive."

Naruto's lip curled, and he glared at the Hyuuga in disgust. "You didn't seem to have that problem when you were fighting your _cousin_. What, was she not worth it? Why do you suddenly care about _me_ so much?"

Neji shook his head, unmoved. "I warned her, and yet still she fought. The outcome was ordained the moment the fight began, and she persisted in struggling against it. Such a pursuit is...futile. It can only lead to pain and defeat." He stared at Naruto, unblinking. "I will warn you again. If you fight, with the damage you have already taken, you may very well die. Surrender. It is no fault of yours that you were set against me. You never had a chance."

Naruto forced down the urge to charge the Hyuuga without further discussion. If he went into the shroud just then, he couldn't hold back from killing—and Neji was strong enough to knock him out, if he charged still wounded. The ache in his stomach was diminishing, but still painful. 

_Keep him talking...okay._ Naruto took a blind stab.

"You can't fight fate? What the hell is that?" He straightened, sending pain lancing through his stomach again, but ignored it. "You think you've gotten the worst deal anyone's ever had? What, because you were born into the branch house? What a joke! You don't know what it's like for fate to try to screw you over! And you think no one can manage to fight it, just because you've given up?"

Neji's face hardened, and his affected calm barely hid a grating anger. "Fool. You do not know whereof you speak. I suggest that you remain silent, lest your betters take offense at your insolence!"

Naruto grinned, and under the snarl of the fox's influence it was almost genuine. _Gotcha._ "I don't know? Then tell me! Enlighten me, Hyuuga- _sama_ , as to the nature of your pain! Tell me what the _fuck_ makes you think you can talk down to everyone who's actually sacrificed things for this village! My insolence—ha! You're the genius! You're the big strong one! The only power I ever got handed would love to see me dead, but look! Here! I! AM!" He had intended only to keep Neji talking and throw him off balance, but by the end of his oration Naruto had lost sight of those goals; his fists were clenched tight, his fingernails-cum-claws digging into his palms, and he glared at Neji with all the malice in him.

Neji's eyes had widened slightly as Naruto spoke; at his last challenge, the Hyuuga ground his teeth.

"So you think you can avoid your destiny?" He shifted, just slightly, keeping himself perfectly balanced as he reached behind his head and unfastened the strap of his hitai-ite. "Perhaps you can try. Perhaps by dint of your own efforts, you can make more of yourself than would exist if you had remained idle. But always there is an insurmountable wall. There are barriers you cannot pass, fates which are truly inevitable." The metal plate above his eyes came down. His forehead, exposed now, bore the mark of a cross in its center, flanked by two long slashes to the sides. They crawled with power, and the seal's own black lines spidered over it.

"This is the crystallization of my fate, Uzumaki Naruto. And, for this match, of yours. It is...insurmountable. I cannot be free. If I were to sacrifice myself for Konoha, Uzumaki Naruto, it would not be my own choice to do so. That is a decision which will be taken out of my hands."

He dropped the cloth in his hands, and the plate of his hitai-ite clattered on the ground. By the time the sound had faded, his hands had snapped back into the jyuuken ready stance, and his eyes narrowed, focused again on Naruto.

"Yet that fate does not only bind me. I have told you this, Uzumaki Naruto. You cannot win this match. It is impossible. You can no more defeat me than I can escape my bonds." He inclined his head slightly. "Come and see."

The pain in Naruto's stomach had almost subsided already, but even if it had not, he was losing the self-control to hold himself back. Shoving chakra out, he created a mob of clones, and charged among them at the Hyuuga.

This time, Neji did not hold his place and take the assault. He charged back at Naruto with startling speed. In a flash, he threw himself into the largest concentration of clones—then, before any of them could detonate themselves or even strike at him, he spun, and they were obliterated in a blue flash.

Neji continued his attack, running straight at Naruto and ignoring the few clones that remained. Naruto had only a moment to notice Neji drawing back his hand, preparing another sledgehammer jyuuken blow. He swapped himself out with one of the clones, and half a second later winced as it was disrupted catastrophically. The Hyuuga ignored the momentary cloud of chakra smoke that surrounded him, but instead whirled about and charged again—straight at Naruto, ignoring the few other clones around.

Naruto switched in for another clone earlier, this time, intending for it to detonate when the Hyuuga approached. But the moment the substitution had finished, Neji spun about, slashing his hand at the clone. A thin line of force shot out, too quickly for it to dodge, and dispersed the clone. Naruto was taken aback for a moment by the memory, and so nearly did not react in time when Neji ran straight at him.

He substituted himself out for another of his diminishing supply of clones, and crossed his hands to make more. His chakra supply was actually noticeably diminished, now, from the massive clone technique and healing himself up after Neji's ridiculously powerful blow. Ordinarily he would not have worried—his available reserves were still many times greater than the average jounin's—but the Hyuuga was unnerving him. The exhaustion which had seemed to end his long defensive _kaiten_ had vanished, and his quick, savage movements as he cut through the clones in his way showed no sign of abating.

_And he keeps going straight for me! How's that possible? Are his eyes better than Hinata-chan's, to pick me out from the clones?_

No clone that approached Neji could get close enough to detonate before it was killed; though he was no longer using the _kaiten_ , his ability to destroy clones with _kuushou_ just before they exploded verged on the precognitive. Naruto instead threw an ordinary kunai with attached explosive tag straight under the Hyuuga's feet. Neji leaped up, avoiding the explosion easily; however, this bought Naruto time to shower him with kunai from the clones which had not yet been dispersed.

Neji spun about in midair, releasing another momentary _kaiten_ and knocking the weapons away. Then, he released another wave of chakra behind him and shot forward, straight at Naruto.

Naruto quickly replaced himself with another clone, finding himself among the rest in a tight cluster; they had congregated in order to take the best available shots at Neji while he hung in the air. He soon regretted that, as the Hyuuga destroyed the clone he had switched with and turn to unleash a monster _kuushou_ at the whole group.

Naruto found himself flying through the air. Disoriented by all his clones being caught at once, he did not recover until he had already landed and skidded. By that time, Neji was only three paces away, charging at him at full speed, both his hands glowing with chakra.

In a moment of sudden desperation, Naruto ceased in his efforts at controlling the fox's power, and instead pulled it frantically outside him. The cloak formed in a flash, covering his body to six inches out with surging, corrosive chakra. Not a second later, Neji's overpowered double _jyuuken_ blow went home in his chest and stomach.

The chakra of Neji's blow contended with the cloak for a moment, and then vanished, overpowered by the more potent force. Neji's open hands were repulsed by the cloak, and he snatched them back, his eyes widening in surprise.

Naruto jumped up, his feet under him, his vision suddenly full of nothing but red. The enemy was before him. The enemy sought to hurt him. The enemy had hurt those under his protection.

He threw himself forward, slashing out at the Hyuuga with claws of red fury. Neji leaped aside, and the blow that would have rent his head in two barely caught his cheek. Naruto landed, spun about, charged again. With more warning, this time, the Hyuuga jumped straight up and over him, cleanly evading.

Naruto roared in frustration and attacked again. Neji tensed, as if to dodge, but then, instead, took a single measured step to the side.

Naruto roared again, this time triumphantly—the enemy had not moved far enough, his speed had not betrayed him—he turned the slightest bit, red claws surging out—and the enemy spun, and there was a flash of blue and _noise_ and _pain_ , and he was crashing to the ground twenty feet away.

He was confused, for a moment. He tried to stand, and it was a matter of some difficulty—his legs betrayed him, stiff and painful, having lost their impossible speed and strength. He staggered once, then regained his balance. The world seemed somehow impoverished, as if—

Right. He had lost the shroud; indeed, the flow of the fox's chakra in him had near-entirely ceased. The lines were still visible, but even the strength the boost granted him had waned.

Neji stood some distance away, staring at him, teeth bared in a wild look. His hands were burned and red, blisters already beginning to form, from where he had attempted to strike through the shroud. Blood ran down his face from a long, shallow cut on his cheek, dripping down onto his shirt, and his eyes were hard.

The Hyuuga stood at first in a wary stance, hands up to defend; however, as it became clear that Naruto had reverted, he relaxed, his face contemptuous. 

"Again you fail! You still think that strength is a matter of all the brute force you can bring to bear! Whatever that power of yours is, you will never defeat me if the only thing you can think to do with it is charge straight at me again and again!" He shook his head. "You think that because you have such absurd chakra that you cannot be defeated? Learn to fight! I imagine you cannot even tell how I distinguish you from your copies. You think any source of power will simply make you that much stronger, without regard for the particulars. Whatever your advantages, you are not _strong_!"

_So he can tell me from my clones! How's he doing that?_ Naruto jumped backward as Neji ran at him again, ending the brief lull in the combat. He hurriedly crossed his hands again, spawning another wave of clones which jumped into the Hyuuga's way. These only delayed him for a moment, and Naruto had to frantically yank the boost over him once again in order to dodge the second rush in time. There was a speed to the Hyuuga's movements even greater than before, and Naruto realized with a wince that Neji had been holding back all through the majority of the fight.

_How can I take this guy down without just going fox? Can't get close to him, can't fool him...damn it, that thing would work, except he can somehow tell where I am! How?_

He dodged frantically as Neji cut through another wave of his clones, then crouched and jumped high. Neji attempted to follow, but Naruto created a clone just between them, which detonated itself from outside the range of the Hyuuga's kaiten. The shockwave, ordinarily insignificant at that range, served to swat Neji out of the air; the Hyuuga landed with a roll and stared up at Naruto, who had been shot sideways by the impact of the explosion, and anchored himself to the arena wall about fifteen feet up. The intricate web of seals all along the wall seemed to shimmer slightly in the corner of his eye, and he could see the lines and points of death all along their weaving, identical yet distinct from those of the wall itself.

He stared warily at Neji, thinking furiously. _How's he seeing me? He's Hyuuga, he can see the inside of my body and all my chakra pathways...but the shadow clones should be just the same! What's going on?_

His respite was only momentary. After no more than five seconds to think, Neji had charged straight at the wall, and now he ran straight up it, right at Naruto. This time, though, Naruto had enough warning. Neji now seemed endowed of a paranoid determination to leave him no clones on the field for longer than five seconds, but _kawarimi_ had never been really intended for use on clones anyway. Neji's chakra-laced blow struck an irregular chunk of wood and split it in two; Naruto found himself halfway across the arena.

Naruto found his bearings, looked up, and gritted his teeth. Neji had chosen to jump off the wall, arcing straight down toward Naruto, chakra gathering around his hands again. Naruto created another cluster of clones, all around him; this time, they did not swarm the Hyuuga, but scattered at a sprint in all directions, Naruto among them. Neji, of course, ignored the fleeing clones, and landed already running straight toward Naruto. Naruto dropped another swarm of clones behind him as he ran, which held the Hyuuga for perhaps half a second. Just as Neji approached striking range, Naruto switched himself for one of the clones which had scattered around the field, and looked warily back at Neji, now most of the arena away.

_He can tell who I am...what's different between me and the clones? He said—_

Neji's voice, thick with contempt, seemed almost to ring in his ears. _Any source of power...Whatever your advantages, you are not strong!_

Neji had crossed half the arena when it hit him, and he suppressed the urge to swear at his own stupidity. Chakra. The Hyuuga could see chakra, and he was drawing profligately on a powerful, alien chakra battery. _Damn it!_

He jumped away again, and in midair substituted for another of his scattered clones. The clone's memories hit him as soon as he had completed the technique, almost, and he gritted his teeth. Neji could have nowhere near his chakra capacity, but his strategy was by far the more chakra-intensive one. 

_Okay. If that's how he's seeing me...I can fool him. Time to use that thing._

Neji was already nearing him, and he substituted for another clone before he had even approached, then concentrated. He had only done this before when fully immersed in the cloak, but it had to still be possible....

He gathered significantly more chakra than usual, enough for a clone to hold wall or water walking for hours at a time. More significantly, though, Naruto grabbed at the fox's power and forced it out, not letting it sink into his muscles to boost him as usual, but mixing it haphazardly with his own chakra and shoving it into a kage bunshin.

Neji was already nearing him, having turned to attack again the moment he switched away. As Naruto finished creating his decoy clone, he jumped away to one side, and watched the clone run in the opposite direction—and in midair, he forced the fox's chakra out of his system and slammed the seal shut.

He almost stumbled on landing, the sudden shock of mere, ordinary human capabilities counter to his reflexes. The lines vanished, and he felt oddly diminished. But Neji, tearing past in pursuit of the clone, ignored him completely.

Naruto grinned and set about the next phase of the plan.

* * *

Hyuuga Neji ran, his teeth clenched. It was frustrating, charging headlong after Uzumaki one way across the arena only to immediately turn around and retrace his steps, but _kawarimi_ was more suited to escape than pursuit, and he couldn't use the _shunshin_. Not for the first time, he cursed his lack of real options in ranged attack—the _kuushou_ was powerful, but its attenuation at range was such that even across the arena it would be useless against the original Uzumaki. On one level, though, it was a good thing—even with the chakra boosting his speed, he was spending less of his power to cross the arena than Uzumaki was. Monstrous as his chakra capacity was, it was not infinite—and Neji only needed one mistake.

His eyes narrowed as Uzumaki created another clumsy attempt at a distraction. Like all the others, while it duplicated precisely the rookie's appearance before the match, it lacked the flaring red power the original drew on now, the power that seemed to boost Uzumaki's strength and speed to nearly equal his own, despite the other boy's lack of a taijutsu focus.

He ignored the clone, in favor of continuing his charge after the original Uzumaki, and smirked internally. The boy's speed had fallen—he was forced to resort to _kawarimi_ more often now, barely staying ahead of Neji's strikes—and the red power inside him was flickering, dimmer now, when before it had seemed inexhaustible. Neji took inventory himself, and guessed that he was not yet halfway to the point where exhaustion would degrade his capabilities. The match would be over soon.

As if he sensed it as well, the Uzumaki did something, and the clones he had left scattered around the arena began throwing kunai and shuriken at him from all directions. They might as well not have bothered. Neji ducked, weaved, occasionally jumped, and navigated the steady rain of steel without taking a single hit. He could see every projectile in flight, trace the subtleties of their spin as they cut the air; could see each clone working, peer inside their muscles and know their motions before they occurred. A Hyuuga did not have the Uchiha's inherent predictive ability, but their eyes were the more insightful. It only required a bit of thought.

He reached into the pouch at his waist and withdrew his own projectiles. Plain shuriken would be less than useless against the real Uzumaki, who had—somehow—stood and shouted back defiance after Neji's blow should have shut his body down for days. But the clones did not share that ridiculous endurance, and it took only a single accurately delivered shot to each to disrupt their structure, the chakra so solid it was indistinguishable from real matter suddenly losing cohesion and exploding into a cloud of undifferentiated smoke. Within a few seconds, there was only one more clone on the field. Then none, as Neji closed on the original Naruto again, and the familiar flare of chakra signified his fast _kawarimi_ escape. 

Neji spun about. Uzumaki, now bereft of clones, was across the arena; Neji ran at him. Before he had gone far, however, Uzumaki jumped up on the wall and anchored himself there, fourteen feet up. Chakra flared around him, and Neji's eyes narrowed. 

"Take this!" he shouted, and threw a shuriken, one that glowed bright with chakra. Neji stared at it, time seeming to slow, wishing for one traitorous moment that he had the Uchiha precognition, rather than the Hyuuga insight. Then it flashed even brighter, not so much as to blind but still more than anyone else he could think of could make a technique, as the Uzumaki on the wall shouted. "Shuriken kage bunshin no jutsu!"

The single blade, spinning in midair as it shot toward him, suddenly multiplied a thousandfold, becoming a wave of metal in the sky that threatened to crush Neji if it didn't slice him apart. For a moment of pure shock, he was frozen in place. That technique belonged to Sandaime Hokage—the only person ever to successfully apply _kage bunshin_ to an object at a distance. It was impossible that this child, this rookie, this dead-last whose only strength was his unreasonable chakra capacity could manage it.

His reflexes saved him. As the steel wave began to break over him, by pure instinct he spun about, chakra expelled from every point on his body, the pressure forming a dome of protection around him, impenetrable. He felt it like a punch from Gai-sensei to his entire body as the leading edge of the swarm struck, but the dome held. The barrage lasted almost four seconds, and by the end Neji had put more chakra into it than he had ever used on _kaiten_ , but it held. The trailing shuriken clattered off the dome like the last raindrops of a sudden, drenching storm, and Neji let himself still, staggering from dizziness and sudden chakra drain.

The ground around him shone with steel. In every square foot of ground there was at least one shuriken, whether lying flat, buried entirely or sticking points-up in the dirt. Behind him, near the wall and its great sealed barrier, it was even worse; the blades were scattered on top of each other two or three deep, where they had hit the immaterial wall and fallen to the ground. The circle ten feet around Neji was the only clear ground in his half of the arena.

Uzumaki had jumped down from his perch on the wall, and seemed to have been in the process of picking his way over the makeshift caltrops toward Neji's location when he noticed the Hyuuga standing uninjured in his clear zone. His eyes were wide, his face slack, and his mouth hung slightly open as he stared.

Neji gritted his teeth. That attack...impossible, but Uzumaki seemed to treat that word as a challenge. It had almost overdrawn him. He certainly could not take another; could not even play the same dancing game he had for most of the match for much longer. He had to end it decisively.

"Impressive," he said, concentrating, preparing himself. "And yet still insufficient. You should have anticipated that a projectile attack, no matter how powerful, would be unable to penetrate my defenses." He took a step forward, another; Uzumaki remained frozen. "But now, as it was fated, the battle must end." Yes, the boy was close enough. Neji took a deep breath. "You are within the range of my divination."

More chakra into his eyes, pouring it away like water. The world seemed to shrink, as he lost the extreme range of the plain Byakugan; black walls appeared to close in around the arena, until he, Uzumaki, and the blade-adorned arena floor were alone in a great, dark sphere. The blind spot behind his neck closed itself, granting him truly complete vision. He could see everything, see Uzumaki, his chakra now nearly drained, in every subtlety of his motions, see the worms and smaller creatures burrowing around tree roots below him, see the ephemeral, near-invisible swirls in the air all around. The shuriken embedded in the earth still glowed with the chakra that formed them, and he could see the places where his feet would land to reach Uzumaki in four strides.

It was a technique he should not have known, should not have been able to know. Just like the _hakkeshou kaiten_ , it was a technique passed from Head to heir within the main branch. But Hinata-sama could not have learned this. No other Hyuuga could—even those few members of the branch family more powerful than he himself had not watched the heir's training every chance they had. Hiashi-sama had given up in disgust when Hinata did not show any genius near his level, but the few demonstrations he had seen, and the descriptions that could be gleaned from scrolls, together with his long, bitter practice...they had sufficed.

Chakra into his muscles, now, powering flashing movement. One stride, two, three, four, and Uzumaki was before him. He seemed to be moving in slow motion, an effect of the vastly increased comprehension of the _hakke_ state; he was just jerking away from Neji in a panic, but the strikes still went home. Two jabs of the fingers into chakra points in the chest and stomach. "Two palms!"

Neji gathered himself, seeing Uzumaki reeling from the two blows, and set himself for the next. He was already moving to strike when the Uzumaki in front of him underwent a familiar unraveling. Disturbances appeared where he had struck already, propagated outward at speed, and in a moment there was no more opponent, just a puff of fading smoke. A clone. _What?_

And then the three cloned shuriken directly below him, which he had beforehand ignored except to avoid treading on them, flashed bright with chakra. He had only the slightest moment to react before they detonated, and he was suddenly weightless, and he could feel nothing but pain.

* * *

At the memories of the three clones that had detonated themselves, Naruto gratefully shed his _henge_ and scrambled to his feet. Transforming into an inanimate object left him with no senses other than the crude chakra perception he had been able to achieve in his practicing. It had sufficed for his clones to judge the correct positioning of the Hyuuga and time their detonation, but it certainly did not grant him any real awareness of his surroundings otherwise, and there was no substitute for being able to see things.

He breathed deeply for a moment, winded. He had not been at full capacity when he pulled off the misdirection ploy, and while making clones that were already henged into a small form took somewhat less chakra than human ones, fifteen hundred or so of them was still pushing it. Then, after a few seconds, he spawned a single shadow clone, which dispersed, distributing the news of his success to the thousands of others still transformed into shuriken and lying around the ring.

In a massive cloud of smoke, the silvery sheen to the ground vanished. Naruto shook his head slightly at the memory of forty seconds or so of boredom and darkness, fifteen hundred times over. Then he glanced around, locating the Hyuuga's landing point, and walked toward him.

Against all odds, Neji was still conscious. His legs were a bleeding wreck, but he pushed himself up on his arms to stare at Naruto in disbelief. His eyes had deactivated, leaving him looking oddly vulnerable.

"How...?"

Naruto sighed. He had anticipated this moment, but seeing Neji broken on the ground seemed unaccountably to rob it of its luster. "Stronger than you thought I would be, huh?"

There was no reply. The examiner had approached to within twenty paces, and gave Naruto a questioning look. He ignored him.

After a moment, Naruto shook his head. "I told you a month ago I was going to kill you. I think...I think I would have. But you'll survive this. I didn't kill you, because your cousin, Hinata-chan, she begged me not to. Even after you beat her half to death in the ring."

Neji smirked bitterly. "Of course...." He coughed, and blood sprayed from his lips. "So this was...my fate. After all." His arms gave out, and he fell backward.

Naruto scowled at him, crossing the distance between them in only a few strides. "No! You bastard, you don't get it! If there was any stupid fate running here, you'd have won already! God knows that's what everyone else in the village expects!" He took a breath. "God damn it, just stop that. Hinata-chan didn't want you to be acting like a moron."

Neji, staring up at him, shook his head minutely. "My fate...is still intact...."

Naruto's eyes flicked to the seal on Neji's forehead, and his lips tightened. "Oh. Right." He considered for a moment. On the one hand, Kakashi had told him to keep his ability covert. On the other...

"Okay, screw that thing."

He pulled the seal open again, not drawing on the boost. Lines patterned his vision, familiar after so long.

It was the work of a moment to push a senbon through the point on Neji's face. The Hyuuga seized up, suddenly, his eyes bulging wide, his teeth clenched. The seal seemed to fade, then suddenly lost its coherence entirely, fading into a vaguely linear blur of color along Neji's forehead. Neji relaxed suddenly, but his eyes were vacant, unconscious.

There was the sound of running feet, and three shinobi dashed up beside Naruto. One shoved him aside rather unceremoniously, and all three gathered around Neji. One was already waving a glowing hand over his chest, and another was saying something urgent-sounding involving ribs and lungs.

A few seconds later, two more medics ran up, these two carrying a stretcher between them. Neji was quickly loaded onto the stretcher and carried off. Naruto was left alone on the field. 

The examiner was still where he had stood to evaluate Neji. He was staring intently at Naruto. When Naruto noticed, a few moments later, he looked back, more tiredly than anything.

After a few moments, the examiner turned back up to the stands and cleared his throat. "Winner! Uzumaki Naruto!"


End file.
